Duke researchers: Gene discovery explains how fruit flies retreat from heat

A discovery in fruit flies may be able to tell us more about how animals, including humans, sense potentially dangerous discomforts. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center uncovered naturally occurring variations of a gene named TRPA1 that is important for the function of pain-sensing neurons throughout the animal kingdom. The gene makes an ion channel, which floods sensory neurons with calcium ions when the fly is near a heat source, causing fruit fly larvae to respond with a corkscrew-style rolling motion away from the heat source. Interestingly, many noxious chemicals that trigger painful sensations, including wasabi and tear gas, also activate the TRPA1 channel in humans and fruit flies. The variants identified by the Duke team all respond to these noxious chemicals but vary in their responses to temperature. Finding similar variants in humans may give important insights into pain-sensing. The senior author Dan Tracey, Ph.D., notes that the TRPA1 channels in humans are more likely to detect pain from cold temperatures as well as chemical pain.

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• Duke
• Medicine
• Temperature
• Pain
• Perception
• fruit
• flies
• sensing
• heat
• mammals
• TRPA1
• genes