Xia Wang
BSc (1999, Tai’an, China)
MS (2002, Tai’an, China)

Ph.D. Graduate Student

Background
I did my BSc study in Forestry and MS research in Botany with Dr Xiansheng Zhang in Shandong Agriculture University, China, where I worked on the molecular biology of plant development. Now, I work with Dr J. Steve de Belle and Dr Stephen P. Roberts on the environmental influence on brain, behavior, and genome in fruit fly.

Research Statement
Environmental stress exposure (nutritive, chemical, electromagnetic and thermal) has been shown to disrupt CNS development in every model system studied to date. However, few studies have linked environmental stress to specific targets in brain development and their consequences for behavioral domains. Here we address this issue by examining the effects of thermal stress on development of the Drosophila melanogaster mushroom body (MB), a highly conserved paired neuropil structure in the insect brain that is important for associative learning and memory. 25 °C-reared D. melanogaster were exposed daily to a brief heat shock (39.5 °C for 40 min) throughout larval and pupal development. In adult flies, MB volume was reduced by roughly 30%, yet the brain central complex and antennal lobes, wings and legs showed little or no reduction in size relative to control flies reared at a constant 25 °C. The ability of heat-shocked flies to form paired memories of odor and electric shock was also profoundly reduced, even though these flies showed normal olfactory ability and shock avoidance. We are now investigating the mechanisms of this phenomenon.

Publications

Wang X. (2002) Microarray Analysis of Rice Seeds cDNAs and Characterization of Two Embryo-specific genes. MS thesis.

Wang X, Green D S, de Belle J S, Roberts S P. (In Prep) Drosophila Mushroom Body Development and Odor Learning and Memory Are Impaired by Ecologically-Relevant Heat Shock.