Neurobiology and the Drosophila genome

The sequencing and annotation of the euchromatin of the Drosophila melanogaster genome provides an important foundation that allows neurobiologists to work back from the complete gene set of neuronal proteins to an eventual understanding of how they function to produce cognition and behavior. Here we provide a brief survey of some of the key insights that have emerged from analyzing the complete gene set in Drosophila. Not surprisingly, both the Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila genomes contain a conserved repertoire of neuronal signaling proteins that are also present in mammals. This includes a large number of neuronal cell adhesion receptors, synapse-organizing proteins, ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors, and synaptic vesicle-trafficking proteins. In addition, there are a significant number of fly homologs of human neurological disease loci, suggesting that Drosophila is likely to be an important disease model for human neuropathology in the near future. The experimental analysis of the Drosophila neuronal gene set will provide important insights into how the nervous system functions at the cellular level, allowing the field to integrate this information into the framework of ultimately understanding how neuronal ensembles mediate cognition and behavior.