Data for: Chronic exposure to odors at naturally occurring concentrations triggers limited plasticity in early stages of Drosophila olfactory processing

In insects and mammals, olfactory experience in early life alters olfactory behavior and function in later life. In the vinegar fly Drosophila, flies chronically exposed to a high concentration of a monomolecular odor exhibit reduced behavioral aversion to the familiar odor when it is re-encountered. This change in olfactory behavior has been attributed to selective decreases in the sensitivity of second-order olfactory projection neurons (PNs) in the antennal lobe that respond to the overrepresented odor. However, since odorant compounds do not occur at similarly high concentrations in natural sources, the role of odor experience-dependent plasticity in natural environments is unclear. Here, we investigated olfactory plasticity in the antennal lobe of flies chronically exposed to odors at concentrations that are typically encountered in natural odor sources. These stimuli were chosen to each strongly and selectively excite a single class of primary olfactory receptor neuron (ORN), thus..., Flies
Drosophila melanogaster were raised on a 12:12 light:dark cycle at 25°C and 70% relative humidity on cornmeal/molasses food containing: water (17.8 l), agar (136 g), cornmeal (1335.4 g), yeast (540 g), sucrose (320 g), molasses (1.64 l), CaCl2 (12.5 g), sodium tartrate (150 g), tegosept (18.45 g), 95% ethanol (153.3 ml) and propionic acid (91.5 ml). All experiments were performed in 2-day-old female flies. The specific genotype of the flies used in each experiment is given in Supplemental Table 1. The transgenes used in this study were acquired from the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC) or the Kyoto Drosophila Stock Center (DGGR), unless otherwise indicated. They have been previously characterized as follows: NP3481-Gal4 (Kyoto:113297) labels DL5, VM7, and DM6 PNs; MZ612-Gal4 (II) (gift of L. Luo) labels VA6 PNs; Or7a-Gal4(KI) (gift of C. Potter) expresses Gal4 from the Or7a locus under the control of its endogenous regulatory elements; UAS-CD8:GFP (X) (RRID:BDSC_5136) an..., CSV and text file readers