Amanda Guevara, Hillary Gates, Brianna Urbina, Rachael French
Abstract
Food intake is necessary for survival, and natural reward circuitry has evolved to help ensure that animals ingest sufficient food to maintain development, growth, and survival. Drugs of abuse, including alcohol, co-opt the natural reward circuitry in the brain, and this is a major factor in the reinforcement of drug behaviors leading to addiction. At the junction of these two aspects of reward are alterations in feeding behavior due to alcohol consumption. In particular, developmental alcohol exposure (DAE) results in a collection of physical and neurobehavioral disorders collectively referred to as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The deleterious effects of DAE include intellectual disabilities and other neurobehavioral changes, including altered feeding behaviors. Here we use Drosophila melanogaster as a genetic model organism to study the effects of DAE on feeding behavior and the expression and function of Neuropeptide F. We show that addition of a defined concentration of ethanol to food leads to reduced feeding at all stages of development. Further, genetic conditions that reduce or eliminate NPF signaling combine with ethanol exposure to further reduce feeding, and the distribution of NPF is altered in the brains of ethanol-supplemented larvae. Most strikingly, we find that the vast majority of flies with a null mutation in the NPF receptor die early in larval development when reared in ethanol, and provide evidence that this lethality is due to voluntary starvation. Collectively, we find a critical role for NPF signaling in protecting against altered feeding behavior induced by developmental ethanol exposure.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 June 2018.
All research outputs
#16,405,860
of 24,169,085 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Physiology
#7,245
of 14,799 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#216,123
of 336,363 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Physiology
#218
of 420 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,169,085 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 14,799 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one is in the 47th percentile – i.e., 47% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 336,363 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 26th percentile – i.e., 26% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 420 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 45th percentile – i.e., 45% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
