Auditory systems allow organisms to capitalize on information from sounds in the environment.
We are interested in the molecular and cellular mechanisms of how organisms detect sound, and how they use the information from sounds to direct their behavior. We use Drosophila as a model system to examine these processes. The female and the male both hear the love song with their antennae and respond in a sex-specific manner. One advantage of using Drosophila is that we can combine genetics with behavioral and electrophysiological methods to dissect hearing mechanisms. In a screen for mutant flies that do not respond to sound, we recovered several mutants that likely represent genes involved in different molecular processes essential for the flies to hear or to respond normally to the love song.