The Metabolomic Fingerprints of Genetic and Environmental Factors in the Geneticist’s Old Friend D. melanogaster.

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Technology Networks

In many branches of biology, Drosophila melanogaster is the model animal of choice, the reasons being practical aspects such as minimal space requirements and short generation time, and above all the manifold of experiments that has already been carried out on these flies. Here we investigate how the metabolome of D. melanogaster is affected by environmental conditions and genetic factors such as “natural” selection and inbreeding and how genetic and environmental factors may interact on the metabolome. Environmental stress such as high or low temperatures induces plastic responses that enable individuals to survive under environmental conditions that would otherwise be lethal. Furthermore in a stressful environment there will be selection for traits that enable populations to survive e.g. stressful temperatures. Likewise ‘genetic stress’ like inbreeding may also induce a stress response that have similarities to responses induced to cope with environmental stress. These relations will be discussed at the metabolite level, and results will be compared with and related to gene expression and phenotypic data.