Con-DAM: Simultaneous measurement of food intake and sleep in Drosophila at the single fly resolution

TL;DR

Con-DAM is a new tool that allows researchers to measure both food intake and sleep in individual fruit flies at the same time.

Contribution

Con-DAM combines two existing methods into one unit for simultaneous measurement of food intake and sleep in Drosophila.

Findings

Con-DAM enables single-fly resolution for food intake and sleep measurement.

The tool integrates the Con-Ex and DAM systems into a unified platform.

Con-DAM is expected to simplify studies requiring concurrent quantification of these behaviors.

Abstract

Sleep and feeding are conserved behaviors across many taxa of the animal kingdom and are essential for an organism's survival and fitness. Although
Drosophila
has been used to study these behaviors for decades, concurrent measurement of these two behaviors in the same flies on solid media has been a challenge. Here, we report Con-DAM, which enables simultaneous quantification of food intake and sleep/activity at the single fly resolution. Since Con-DAM integrates the Con-Ex (Consumption-Excretion) assay and the DAM (Drosophila Activity Monitor), two widely used tools to quantify food consumption and sleep/activity in flies into a single unit, we expect Con-DAM to serve as an easy method for various purposes that require quantifying food consumption and sleep/activity in the same individual flies.

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