FlyNap (triethylamine) increases the heart rate of mosquitoes and eliminates the cardioacceleratory effect of the neuropeptide CCAP

FlyNap (triethylamine) is commonly used to anesthetize Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. The purpose of this study was to determine whether triethylamine is a suitable anesthetic agent for research into circulatory physiology and immune competence in the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-07, Vol.8 (7), p.e70414-e70414
Main Authors: Chen, Weihan, Hillyer, Julián F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abdomen
Anesthesia
Animals
Anopheles
Anopheles - drug effects
Anopheles - physiology
Anopheles stephensi
Aquatic insects
Bacteria
Bacterial diseases
Bacterial infections
Cold
Crustacean cardioactive peptide
Crustaceans
Culicidae
Drosophila
Drosophila melanogaster
Ethylamines - pharmacology
Exposure
Fruit flies
Heart function
Heart rate
Heart Rate - drug effects
Insects
Mosquitoes
Neuropeptides - pharmacology
Physiological aspects
Physiology
Recovery
Triethylamine
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Summary:FlyNap (triethylamine) is commonly used to anesthetize Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. The purpose of this study was to determine whether triethylamine is a suitable anesthetic agent for research into circulatory physiology and immune competence in the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culicidae). Recovery experiments showed that mosquitoes awaken from traditional cold anesthesia in less than 7 minutes, but that recovery from FlyNap anesthesia does not begin for several hours. Relative to cold anesthesia, moderate exposures to FlyNap induce an increase in the heart rate, a decrease in the percentage of the time the heart contracts in the anterograde direction, and a decrease in the frequency of heartbeat directional reversals. Experiments employing various combinations of cold and FlyNap anesthesia then showed that cold exposure does not affect basal heart physiology, and that the differences seen between the cold and the FlyNap groups are due to a FlyNap-induced alteration of heart physiology. Furthermore, exposure to FlyNap eliminated the cardioacceleratory effect of crustacean cardioactive peptide (CCAP), and reduced a mosquito's ability to survive a bacterial infection. Together, these data show that FlyNap is not a suitable substitute to cold anesthesia in experiments assessing mosquito heart function or immune competence. Moreover, these data also illustrate the intricate biology of the insect heart. Specifically, they confirm that the neurohormone CCAP modulates heart rhythms and that it serves as an anterograde pacemaker.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0070414