Dietary glucose regulates yeast consumption in adult Drosophila males (original) (raw)

Rapid metabolic shifts occur during the transition between hunger and satiety in Drosophila melanogaster

Nature Communications, 2019

Metabolites are active controllers of cellular physiology, but their role in complex behaviors is less clear. Here we report metabolic changes that occur during the transition between hunger and satiety in Drosophila melanogaster. To analyze these data in the context of fruit fly metabolic networks, we developed Flyscape, an open-access tool. We show that in response to eating, metabolic profiles change in quick, but distinct ways in the heads and bodies. Consumption of a high sugar diet dulls the metabolic and behavioral differences between the fasted and fed state, and reshapes the way nutrients are utilized upon eating. Specifically, we found that high dietary sugar increases TCA cycle activity, alters neurochemicals, and depletes 1-carbon metabolism and brain health metabolites N-acetyl-aspartate and kynurenine. Together, our work identifies the metabolic transitions that occur during hunger and satiation, and provides a platform to study the role of metabolites and diet in comp...

Dietary composition specifies consumption, obesity, and lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster

Aging Cell, 2008

The inability to properly balance energy intake and expenditure with nutrient supply forms the basis for some of today's most pressing health issues including diabetes and obesity. Mechanisms of nutrient homeostasis may also lie at the root of dietary restriction, a manipulation whereby reduced nutrient availability extends lifespan and ameliorates age-related deteriorations in many species. The traditional belief that the most important aspect of the diet is its energetic (i.e., caloric) content is currently under scrutiny, and hypotheses that focus on more subtle characteristics revolving around composition are beginning to emerge. Using Drosophila melanogaster, we asked whether diet composition alone, independent of its caloric content, was sufficient to impact behavior, physiology, and lifespan. We found that providing flies with a yeast-rich diet produced lean, reproductively-competent animals with reduced feeding rates. Excess dietary sugar, on the other hand, promoted obesity, which was magnified during aging. Addition of dietary yeast often limited or reversed the phenotypic changes associated with increased dietary sugar and vice versa, and dietary imbalance was associated with reduced lifespan. Our data reveal that diet composition, alone and in combination with overall caloric intake, modulates lifespan, consumption, and fat deposition in flies, and they provide a useful foundation for dissecting the underlying genetic mechanisms that link specific nutrients with important aspects of general health and longevity.

Insulin signalling elicits hunger-induced feeding in Drosophila

Developmental Biology, 2019

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Quantification of Food Intake in Drosophila

PLOS ONE, 2009

Measurement of food intake in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is often necessary for studies of behaviour, nutrition and drug administration. There is no reliable and agreed method for measuring food intake of flies in undisturbed, steady state, and normal culture conditions. We report such a method, based on measurement of feeding frequency by proboscisextension, validated by short-term measurements of food dye intake. We used the method to demonstrate that (a) female flies feed more frequently than males, (b) flies feed more often when housed in larger groups and (c) fly feeding varies at different times of the day. We also show that alterations in food intake are not induced by dietary restriction or by a null mutation of the fly insulin receptor substrate chico. In contrast, mutation of takeout increases food intake by increasing feeding frequency while mutation of ovo D increases food intake by increasing the volume of food consumed per proboscisextension. This approach provides a practical and reliable method for quantification of food intake in Drosophila under normal, undisturbed culture conditions.

A quantitative feeding assay in adult Drosophila reveals rapid modulation of food ingestion by its nutritional value

Molecular brain, 2015

Food intake of the adult fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an intermittent feeder, is attributed to several behavioral elements including foraging, feeding initiation and termination, and food ingestion. Despite the development of various feeding assays in fruit flies, how each of these behavioral elements, particularly food ingestion, is regulated remains largely uncharacterized. To this end, we have developed a manual feeding (MAFE) assay that specifically measures food ingestion of an individual fly completely independent of the other behavioral elements. This assay reliably recapitulates the effects of known feeding modulators, and offers temporal resolution in the scale of seconds. Using this assay, we find that fruit flies can rapidly assess the nutritional value of sugars within 20-30 s, and increase the ingestion of nutritive sugars after prolonged periods of starvation. Two candidate nutrient sensors, SLC5A11 and Gr43a, are required for discriminating the nutritive sugars,...

Drosophila Species as Models for Nutritional Studies: Development, Metabolic Pools on Diets with Contrasting Relative Sugar: Protein Ratios

We examined development time, survival, adult body weights, and metabolic pools of protein, triglycerides and glycogen in three Drosophila species reared on three isocaloric diets differing in their relative ratios of sugar to protein. Drosophila melanogaster, a fruit breeder, survived and developed well on all three diets. But two other species, the cactophilic D. arizonae and D. mojavensis, normally accustomed to low carbohydrate resources in nature, were significantly impaired by diets higher in sugar. As expected, based upon their natural history, D. arizonae was less affected than D. mojavensis. These species, whose genomes are sequenced and have many homologues with human metabolism genes, provide an inexpensive and tractable model system to study human metabolic diseases related to excess dietary sugar.

Role of adipokinetic hormone during starvation in Drosophila

Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2018

The role of adipokinetic hormone (Drome-AKH) in maintaining the levels of basic nutrients, under starvation conditions, was studied using Drosophila melanogaster mutants with AKH deficiency (Akh 1) and AKH abundance (EE-Akh). Our results showed lipids as the main energy reserve in Drosophila, and their physiological level and metabolism were shown to be under the control of AKH. AKH abundance in the body resulted in lower levels of triacylglycerols and diacylglycerols than in the controls, probably due to a more intensive metabolism; interestingly, there was a disproportional representation of fatty acids in triacylglycerols and diacylglycerols in Drosophila. Lower level of glycogen and its partial control by AKH suggest its lesser role as the storage substance. However, maintenance of free carbohydrate level in Drosophila seemed to be critical; when glycogen stores are exhausted, carbohydrates are synthesized from other sources. Protein levels and their alterations, under starvation, did not seem controlled by AKH. AKH-deficient flies were more resistant while AKH-abundant flies were more sensitive to starvation; females were found to be more

Insulin signaling in female Drosophila links diet and sexual attractiveness

FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 2018

Appropriate sexual selection or individual sexual attractiveness is closely associated with the reproductive success of a species. Here, we report that young male flies exhibit innate courtship preference for female flies that are raised on higher-yeast diets and that have greater body weight and fecundity, but reduced locomotor activity and shortened lifespan. Male flies discriminate among females that have been fed diets that contain 3 different yeast concentrations-1, 5, and 20% yeast- via gustatory, but not visual or olfactory, perception. Female flies that are raised on higher-yeast diets exhibit elevated expression levels of Drosophila insulin-like peptides (di lps), and we demonstrate that hypomorphic mutations of di lp2, 3, 5 or foxo, as well as oenocyte-specific gene disruption of the insulin receptor, all abolish this male courtship preference for high yeast-fed females. Moreover, our data demonstrate that disrupted di lp signaling can alter the expression profile of some ...

Insulin signalling activates multiple feedback loops to elicit hunger-induced feeding in Drosophila

Insulin, a highly conserved peptide hormone, links nutrient availability to metabolism and growth in animals. Besides this, in fed states insulin levels are high and insulin acts as a satiety hormone. In animals that are food deprived insulin levels remain low which facilitates hunger induced feeding. Contrary to expectations, we present evidence for persistent Drosophila insulin-like peptide gene expression and insulin signalling during initial phases of starvation. Maintenance of insulin signalling is crucial to sustain feeding responses during initial stages of starvation. Insulin signalling acts in a feedback loop involving the abdominal fatbody to maintain dilp gene expression in the early stages of food deprivation. Furthermore, another feedback regulatory loop between insulin-producing cells (IPCs) and neurons that produce the orectic hormone short-neuropeptide-F (sNPF), maintains sNPF levels and triggers feeding behavior. Thus, insulin acts through multiple feedback regulato...