Dr. David Anderson

I just don't know it.

I want to distinguish clearly between things that are not known that I know are unknown, which is in a fairly small area where I have expertise from things that may be known, but I'm ignorant of them because I just don't have a broad enough knowledge base to know that.

So tachykinin refers to a family of related neuropeptides.

So these are brain chemicals.

They're different from dopamine and serotonin in that they're not small organic molecules.

They're actually short pieces of protein.

that are directly encoded by genes that are active in specific neurons and not in others.

And when those neurons are active, those neuropeptides are released together with classical transmitters like glutamate, whatever.

Tachykinins have been famously implicated in pain, particularly tachykinin 1, which is called substance P.

one of the original pain modulating.

This is something that promotes inflammatory pain.

And so we did a screen, unbiased screen of peptides and found indeed that one of the tachykinins, Drosophila tachykinin,

Those neurons, when you activate them, strongly promote aggression and it depends on the release of tachykinin.

Now, the interesting thing is that in flies, just like in people and practically any other social animal that shows aggression,

social isolation increases aggressiveness.

So putting a violent prisoner in solitary confinement is absolutely the worst, most counterproductive thing you could do to them.

And indeed, we found in flies that social isolation increases the level of tachykinin in the brain.

And if we shut that gene down, it prevents the isolation from increasing aggression.

So since my lab also works on mice, it was natural to see whether tachykinins might be upregulated in social isolation and whether they play a role in aggression.

And this is work done by a former postdoc, Moriel Zelikovsky, now at University of Salt Lake City in Utah.