Figure 1

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) induces long-term physiological neurodegenerative phenotypes. TBI-treated flies = red; age-matched, uninjured control flies = dark grey. (A) TBI-treated flies exhibit significantly decreased lifespan, as previously reported^37,41. Acute death in the first 48 h following injury is excluded. One of three independent repeat lifespan experiments is shown (sample size of 110–300 flies per condition). p < 0.0001 according to both Log-rank and Gehan-Breslow-Wilcoxon survival comparison tests. (B) TBI-treated flies exhibit significantly decreased climbing ability at multiple timepoints following the injury: 48 h, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks. Climbing ability is determined as the percent of flies past the midpoint of the climbing vial after 10 s of climbing (at least 14 groups of 20–25 flies each). TBI compared to control at each timepoint is p < 0.0001 according to two-way ANOVA, with Sidak’s multiple comparison correction. One outlier was identified and removed from 4 weeks TBI dataset according to ROUT method (Q = 1%). (C) TBI-treated flies display a larger decrease in climbing ability at 4 weeks post-TBI, calculated as percent change relative to average of age-matched, uninjured controls, than at 48 h and 2 weeks post-TBI. 48 h compared to 4 weeks: p < 0.001, 2 weeks compared to 4 weeks: p < 0.01; 48 h compared to 2 weeks: ns, according to a one-way ANOVA, with Tukey’s multiple comparisons test.