Neurogenetic Approaches to Understand Dynamics of Aggression

Speaker

Kenta Asahina
Assistant Professor
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Abstract

How conflicts among animals are resolved? The dynamics of agonistic interaction offers an insight into how animals communicate and make a proper choice of actions in a context-dependent manner. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an attractive model to understand such process from genetic and neuronal perspectives. I will present our recent progress on the characterization of genes and neurons that mediate fighting behavior of the fly, and quantitative approaches to illuminate their functions on specific aspects of agonistic interactions.