The award, funded by the Systems and Synthetic Biology Program in MCB and the Biotechnology, Biochemical and Biomass Engineering Program in CBET, will support studies of insect behavior. The broad aim of this project is to develop techniques for synthetic animal biology, and to apply them to produce new behaviors. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is the logical starting point for these experiments because it is well understood and experimentally tractable. It has a brain and a nervous system, so it can taste, see, hear, sense odors and touch, learn and remember. It has one of the most sophisticated actuation systems found in nature-the capacity for controlled flight. The proposed experiments will show how these behaviors can be harnessed and engineered. In particular, its olfactory system, which governs its sense of smell, will be genetically modified, so that the resulting strain will not be able to smell anything except a commonly used explosive. Such flies could serve as autonomous biological sensing systems for the detection of bombs and land mines. The PIs will engage students at all levels in interdisciplinary research on this topic, and collaborate with a group of local restaurant chefs to teach the public about the science that underlies flavor and olfaction.
Synthetic biologists design and construct useful biological devices, but most work exclusively with microbes. Multi-cellular species including Drosophila melanogaster possess complex traits such as behavior, perception, cognition and memory. The investigators propose to engineer a fruit fly that senses otherwise undetectable odors. The investigators have bred a D. melanogaster variant that expresses the receptor for bombykol, a sex-attractant pheromone produced by the silk moth, Bombyx mori. The native olfactory receptor set does not function normally in the engineered fly, so it should not be distracted from bombykol by the smell of food or other attractants. In this project, the investigators will express insect odorant receptors in cultured cells, and develop an assay for function (Specific Aim 1), engineer olfactory receptors that better recognize an odorant, 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT, Specific Aim 2), breed new flies that express the engineered olfactory receptor (Specific Aim 3), and t demonstrate the changes in their behavior (attraction to TNT over the normally favored odorant, benzaldehyde, Specific Aim 4). The results of these experiments will be communicated to synthetic biologists (Specific Aim 4) and the general public (Specific Aim 5). The results will improve the current understanding of the structure and function of insect olfactory receptors, which have not been crystallized and are unrelated to those of mammals. More generally, they will extend the scope of synthetic biology to insects and encourage debate about the application of engineering approaches to higher animals.
