in ERK under these conditions (AWL, CLK and UH, unpublished results). It is possible that levels of phosphorylated ERK are altered in a subset of neurons in the brain that we could not detect with western blotting of whole heads, or that changes in ERK phosphorylation are too subtle to detect by western blotting. Alternatively, ethanol treatment may be required to determine if ERK phosphorylation is altered in dAlk mutants. Another hypothesis is that dAlk may signal through a different pathway, such as JAK/STAT or PI3K to affect ethanol-induced sedation in Drosophila [40].
