Larval taste exposure creates compound-specific behavioral modifications in adult Drosophila melanogaster
Vaibhav D. Menon, Christopher Creighton, Mayra Vazquez-Muñoz, Anupama Dahanukar · 2026
Read Larval taste exposure creates compound-specific behavioral modifications in adult Drosophila melanogaster by Vaibhav D. Menon, Christopher Creighton, Mayra Vazquez-Muñoz, Anupama Dahanukar (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13573713.txt.
Description
What a fly larva tastes can echo into its adult choices, at least for one bitter compound. Vaibhav Menon and co-authors raise fruit fly larvae on food dosed with papaverine in a 2026 study. As adults, those flies avoided the bitter alkaloid less than their naive peers did.
The effect was specific: other bitter chemicals still repelled the adults, and their preferences among bitter tastes otherwise stayed put. Larval bitter taste neurons, their projection targets in the brain, and a memory-linked enzyme all contributed to the change. The authors read the result as development writing a narrow, compound-specific note into the adult feeding system. Early diet, in flies at least, tunes later taste behavior with surprising precision.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Vaibhav D. Menon, Christopher Creighton, Mayra Vazquez-Muñoz, Anupama Dahanukar |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 72 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |