A Private History of Neurogenetics: The swiss cheese Gene and Its Orthologs
2021
Melentev, P. A. | Ryabova, E. V. | Sarantseva, S. V.
One of the problems in genetics concerns the role of heredity in behavioral traits of humans and animals. As was believed for many years, behavior is determined by both the environment and the pleiotropic effect of multiple genes, making discrete hereditary factors of behavior elusive. The purposeful production and study of behavior-altered mutants in Drosophila, which was started by Seymour Benzer more than half a century ago, laid the foundation for the direction called neurogenetics. Further establishment of a connection between mutations and various phenotypes made it possible to reveal the role of genes in the determination of functions of the nervous system and in the corresponding regulation of behavior. One of the numerous genes discovered by Seymour Benzer and his followers, in particular, Martin Heisenberg, in the course of research on Drosophila mutants was the swiss cheese gene, which regulates viability of neurons and glial cells. Multiple studies of this evolutionary conservative gene and its orthologs, prompted by interest in analysis of genetic control of viability of nervous tissue cells, decoding the biological mechanisms of the action of organophosphate poisons, and investigation of some hereditary human syndromes, made it possible to identify certain aspects of the role of the swiss cheese gene and its orthologs in cell metabolism, functioning of the nervous system, and regulation of behavior.
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