KCNQ¹⁸⁶ adults lack the significant decrease in preference for nutritive sugars seen in fed versus starved flies, compared to controls.

Flies homozygous for the KCNQ¹⁸⁶ allele have a significant impairment of initial 2 min memory, 1 hour memory and 24 hour memory compared to controls. KCNQ¹⁸⁶ homozygotes have no alterations in olfactory acuity or shock reactivity compared to controls.

KCNQ¹⁸⁶ mutant larvae take 1-2 days longer to develop, a reduced number of animals eclose, and the mean lifespan of females is reduced by 20-30%. Mutant adults show a drastically increased incidence of pacing-induced cardiac dysfunction compared to age-matched controls, and the elevated failure rates observed in young mutant flies does not increase further with age.

Semi-intact KCNQ¹⁸⁶ fly heart preparations from young (1-3 week old) flies exhibit severely nonrhythmic beating patterns, and the incidence of arrhythmia increases more rapidly with age compared to control preparations. A dramatic age-dependent increase of the heart period (defined as the length of time between the ends of two consecutive diastolic intervals) compared with age-matched controls is also observed, and both diastolic intervals and systolic intervals show age-dependent increases in length.

Electrophysiology field potential recordings from semi-intact KCNQ¹⁸⁶ fly heart preparations show that negative deflections do not immediately follow the initial positive potentials, and usually occur with significant delay compared to wildtype preparations.

Semi-intact KCNQ¹⁸⁶ fly heart preparations show lower rates of muscle contractions compared to controls. In response to electrical stimulation, hearts exhibit fibrillation, markedly elevated diastolic tension, and extremely delayed recovery to baseline diastolic tension relative to wildtype hearts.