Difference between revisions of "Team:Tongji China/Design"

To control the expression of dopamine by temperature changing, we design three pathway: pleP-GAL4, pleP-GAL80ts and UAS-TH. pleP is a specific promoter in fruit fly’s cell which could express dopamine. The product TH express is a rate-limiting enzyme in the dopamine’s synthesis. The activity of GAL80ts is temperature dependent.



At 18-25°C (the optimum temperature for fruit flies’ growth), it has the activity binding to GAL4, which will eliminate the effect GAL4 binding to UAS, then downstream gene TH will not express and the expression level of dopamine is normal.



When the temperature is up to 29℃, GAL80ts will be inactivated, then GAL4 works properly, binding to GAL4 binding sequence on UAS, and start the expression of downstream gene TH which will leads to the overexpression of dopamine in Drosophila.

After the plasmid build, we want to test the function and effect of our system in fruit flies.
Can our system affect the phenotype of fruit flies? Did the modified fruit fly maintain this sexual preference during courtship like most wild-type male flies? Will they attract other male fruit flies?
Does the phenotype of the modified fruit fly affect wild-type flies? According to previous studies, transgenic fruit flies have far less survivability than wild-type flies. Is the viability of our modified fruit flies affected? What about the spawning of female flies that mate with modified flies? Will the modified fruit fly cause a change in the mating rate of the population?


In order to make clear these questions, we design and complete the behavior test.