TY - JOUR T1 - Persistent one-way walking in a circular arena in <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em> Canton-S strain JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/145888 SP - 145888 AU - Chengfeng Xiao AU - Shuang Qiu AU - R Meldrum Robertson Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/06/145888.abstract N2 - We describe persistent one-way walking of Drosophila melanogaster in a circular arena. Wild-type Canton-S adult flies walked in one direction, counter-clockwise or clockwise, for minutes, whereas white-eyed mutant w1118 changed directions frequently. Computational analysis of locomotor behavior showed that counter-clockwise walking and clockwise walking were the two main components of locomotion, and that pausing was more frequently associated with directional persistence but not directional change. Genetic analysis revealed that while wild-type genetic background primarily controlled the number of counter-clockwise walking and clockwise walking during five minutes of locomotion, the white (w+) gene promoted persistent one-way walking by increasing the number of pauses, increasing the maximal duration of one-way walking, and reducing the path length in five minutes. These results support a pleiotropic function of w+ in promoting persistent one-way walking in addition to eye pigmentation. ER -