Research

Our lab is interested in brain development, brain plasticity and how animals process then, regulate responses to information. We use insects (fruit flies and ants) as model organisms. Insects have relatively simple brains which are easy to study.They also are easily conditioned and adapt readily to new environments. We have found, for example, that flies raised in darkness use olfaction more than dark-light cycled flies to locate food sources. We have also found that insects can learn to associate odors with rewards and that they can habituate to repellents.These changes in behvaior are facilitated by changes in olfactory processing, which appears to be achieved by altering the balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. We are now beginning to investigate which cells exactly in the olfactory processing centers respond to different types of olfactory information (attractive, repellent or irrelevant) and how thos cells regulate different responses to these signals. For a more detailed look at current projects, take a look at the Student Research page

Relevant Publications

Walter, R., Bennett, A. and Robertson, K. (2012) A molecular mechanism for behavioral plasticity in insects . In preparation

Coates, K. and Robertson, K. (2012) Muscarininc Acetylcholine Receptors are Required for Nestmate-Odor Memory Retrieval but not for Olfaction in Harvester Ants. in press in BIOS

Cook, S. and Robertson, K. (2009) Dark-reared Drosophila melanogaster Adapt to their Environment by Acetylcholine-driven Changes in Olfactory Sensitivity. Proceedings of the Society for Comparative Cognition 8 (7) 10-12

Gong, L., Puri, M., Unlu, M., Young, M., Robertson, K., Viswanathan, S., Krishnaswamy, A., Dowd, S. R. and Minden, J. S. (2004) Drosophila Ventral Furrow Morphogenesis: a Proteomic Analysis. Development 131; 643-656

Robertson, K., Mergliano, J. amd Minden, J. S. (2003) Dissecting Drosophila Embryonic Brain Development using Photoactivated Gene Expression. Dev. Biol. 260, 124-137

Robertson, K. and Mason, I (1997) The GDNF-RET Signaling Partnership. Trends in Genetics, 13 (1) 1-3

Robertson, K. and Mason, I (1995) Expression of ret in thechicken embryo suggests roles for regioanlization of the neural tube and somites, and in the development of mutiple neural crest and placodal lineages. Mech. Dev. 53. 329-344