Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Genetics
Deja Clay - Fort Valley State University
Co-Author(s): Allen Gibbs, School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada
Based upon previous research conducted by last year on how dietary sugar and protein influence lipid storage in Drosophila, we investigated how micronutrients contribute to the triglyceride and protein storage of each fruit fly. We dispersed the diets between the fed controlled and the starvation selected Drosophila. The objective of this experiment was to observe the development time and the triglyceride and protein content of the Drosophila placed in each diet. The experiment began by first creating seven diets as follows; standard diet (equal amounts of yeast and sugar), high sugar, sugar and vitamins, sugar and RNA, sugar and cholesterol, sugar and salts, and a diet that contained all of these micro/macronutrients named ALL. The larvae were exposed to the diets as soon as they hatched. Several observations were depicted among the larva like their development time and size over the course of days. After all of the larvae had pupated and metamorphosed into their adult stages, we collected them to measure triglyceride and protein storage. As of now, we found that starved selected fruit flies subjected to the high sugar and ALL diet tended to have the largest triglyceride standards.
References: Reis T. Effects of Synthetic Diets Enriched in Specific Nutrients on Drosophila Development, Body Fat, and Lifespan. Broughton SJ, ed. PLoS ONE. 2016; 11(1):e0146758. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146758. Skorupa DA, Dervisefendic A, Zwiener J, Pletcher SD. Dietary composition specifies consumption, obesity and lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster. Aging cell. 2008; 7(4):478-490.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported in part by a grant from the NSF DBI REU-Site at University Nevada, Las Vegas #1358896 and NSF HBCU-UP/Targeted Infusion #1332503 awarded to Sarwan Dhir, PhD at Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA-31030.
Faculty Advisor: Sarwan Dhir, dhirs0@fvsu.edu
Role: Design the experiments, collect the data, and prepare the data for presentation.