Research Paper Volume 15, Issue 4 pp 947—981

Figure 1. dLdh protein levels increase in the brain with age while long-term courtship memory is retained in control male flies. (A) Courtship conditioning paradigm used for testing long-term courtship memory throughout this study. (B) Courtship indexes for Canton-S male flies aged 7, 14, or 30 days at 25°C decreased in courtship conditioning rejection trained vs. naïve conditions at all ages. N = 100–117. Naïve and trained flies were compared for each age group using one-sided Mann-Whitney U tests, ^****p < 0.0001. Data presented as violin plot of frequency distribution. (C) Long-term courtship memory indexes for trained flies represented in B do not differ between age groups. Age groups were compared using a Kruskal-Wallis test with Dunn’s multiple comparisons tests. (D) Survival curve of Canton-S male flies singly housed is decreased at 29°C compared with 25°C and ages which were selected for memory testing in control (25°C black) and transgenic (29°C red) flies are highlighted with vertical dotted lines. Curve comparison was made using a Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test, ^****p < 0.0001. Data presented as violin plot of frequency distribution. (E) Western blot analysis of head extracts from male Canton-S flies aged 7, 14 or 30 days at 29°C showing dLdh protein levels increase with age (F(2, 10) = 36.64, p < 0.0001) n = 4–5. Each sample consists of protein extracts from 20 heads. Comparisons across age were made using one-way ANOVA with Šídák’s multiple comparisons tests between all age groups. ^***p < 0.001, ^****p < 0.0001.