PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Ken Honjo AU - Stephanie E. Mauthner AU - Yu Wang AU - J. H. Pate Skene AU - W. Daniel Tracey TI - Nociceptor-enriched genes required for normal thermal nociception AID - 10.1101/053413 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 053413 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/18/053413.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/18/053413.full AB - Here, we describe a targeted reverse genetic screen for thermal nociception genes of Drosophila larvae. Using laser capture microdissection and microarray analyses of nociceptive and non-nociceptive neurons we identified 275 nociceptor-enriched genes. We then tested the function of the enriched genes with nociceptor-specific RNAi and thermal nociception assays. Tissue specific RNAi targeted against 14 genes caused insensitive thermal nociception while targeting of 22 genes caused hypersensitive thermal nociception. Previously uncategorized genes were named for heat resistance (ie. boilerman, fire dancer, oven mitt, trivet, thawb and bunker gear) or heat sensitivity (firelighter, black match, eucalyptus, primacord, jet fuel, detonator, gasoline, smoke alarm, and jetboil). Insensitive nociception phenotypes were often associated with severely reduced branching of nociceptor neurites and hyperbranched dendrites were seen in two of the hypersensitive cases. Many genes that we identified were not isolated in a prior genome-wide screen, and are evolutionarily conserved in mammals.