Project description:Thermal acclimation study on Drosophila melanogaster reared at 3 different temperatures (12, 25, and 31oC). The proteomic profiles of D. melanogaster under these different temperatures were analyzed and compared using label-free tandem mass spectrometry.
Project description:Understanding the genotype-phenotype map and how variation at different levels of biological organization is associated are central topics in modern biology. Fast developments in sequencing technologies and other molecular omic tools enable researchers to obtain detailed information on variation at DNA level and on intermediate endophenotypes, such as RNA, proteins and metabolites. This can facilitate our understanding of the link between genotypes and molecular and functional organismal phenotypes. Here, we use the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics to investigate the ability of the metabolome to predict organismal phenotypes. We performed NMR metabolomics on four replicate pools of male flies from each of 170 different isogenic lines. Our results show that metabolite profiles are variable among the investigated lines and that this variation is highly heritable. Second, we identify genes associated with metabolome variation. Third, using the metabolome gave better prediction accuracies than genomic information for four of five quantitative traits analyzed. Our comprehensive characterization of population-scale diversity of metabolomes and its genetic basis illustrates that metabolites have large potential as predictors of organismal phenotypes. This finding is of great importance, e.g., in human medicine, evolutionary biology and animal and plant breeding.
Project description:Given the continued advances in mass spectrometry technology and methods for database searching since the previous characterization of the Drosophila melanogaster sperm proteome, a new proteomic analysis of sperm samples was conducted to expand the size and coverage of the sperm proteome. This dataset is part of a larger project examining the molecular life history of Drosophila sperm.
Project description:We have studied the deoxynucleotide transport in Drosophila melanogaster. On the basis of homology with the S. cerevisiae RIM2 gene, encoding a pyrimidine deoxynucleotide carrier (Marrobbio et al. 2006), the CG18317 gene (dRIM2) in the fruit fly may code for a deoxynucleotide carrier. We demonstrated that Drosophila S2R+ cells, silenced for the dRIM2 expression, had a marked defect in the amounts of all mitochondrial dNTPs, both purines and pyrimidines. In vivo dRIM2 homozygous knockout produced a larval lethal phenotype. dRIM2-/- larvae showed (i) impairments in the locomotor behavior, (ii) a decrease in the rates of oxygen consumption and (iii) a depletion of the mtDNA. Following a detailed morphological characterization carried out in dRIM2-/- larvae evidenced an ongoing mitochondrial biogenesis accompanied by an alteration of mitochondria shaping. Additionally, the role of dRIM2 in the purine and pyrimidine metabolism was supported by a microarray analysis. We conclude that dRIM2 is a Drosophila deoxynucleotide carrier, essential for maintaining the mitochondrial functionality.
Project description:We have studied the deoxynucleotide transport in Drosophila melanogaster. On the basis of homology with the S. cerevisiae RIM2 gene, encoding a pyrimidine deoxynucleotide carrier (Marrobbio et al. 2006), the CG18317 gene (dRIM2) in the fruit fly may code for a deoxynucleotide carrier. We demonstrated that Drosophila S2R+ cells, silenced for the dRIM2 expression, had a marked defect in the amounts of all mitochondrial dNTPs, both purines and pyrimidines. In vivo dRIM2 homozygous knockout produced a larval lethal phenotype. dRIM2-/- larvae showed (i) impairments in the locomotor behavior, (ii) a decrease in the rates of oxygen consumption and (iii) a depletion of the mtDNA. Following a detailed morphological characterization carried out in dRIM2-/- larvae evidenced an ongoing mitochondrial biogenesis accompanied by an alteration of mitochondria shaping. Additionally, the role of dRIM2 in the purine and pyrimidine metabolism was supported by a microarray analysis. We conclude that dRIM2 is a Drosophila deoxynucleotide carrier, essential for maintaining the mitochondrial functionality. Gene expression profiling was carried out on dRIM-/- and dRIM+/- Drosophila larvae using the Drosophila 1.0 custom platform (Agilent). Total RNA was obtained from the whole body of 3rd instar larvae for each genotype. Four and three biological replicates were analyzed for dRIM-/- and dRIM+/- samples respectively for a total of 7 microarray experiments.