Factors underlying natural variation in body pigmentation of &lt;i&gt;Drosophila melanogaster&lt;/i&gt;

Sunaga, Saki; Akiyama, Naoki; Miyagi, Ryutaro; Takahashi, Aya

doi:10.1266/ggs.15-00061

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(109 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The Drosophila Genetics Reference Panel (DGRP) collection corresponds to a set of >200 inbred sequenced fruit fly strains, which facilitate GWA studies (Mackay et al, 2012;Huang et al, 2014,). GWAS analyses using the DGRP collection have identified significant genomic associations with a variety of fitness and physiology traits ranging from lifespan and sleep to abdominal pigmentation (Durham et al, 2014;Ivanov et al, 2015;Harbison et al, 2013;Dembeck et al, 2015;Sunaga et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpredictable effects of the genetic background of transgenic lines in physiological quantitative traits

Evangelou

Ignatiou

Antoniou

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most physiology, fitness and disease phenotypes are considered complex traits since they exhibit continuous variation in natural populations. The use of homozygous inbred strains allows the assessment of the impact of genetic composition on complex phenotypes. Nevertheless, to understand gene function, we often combine transgenic lines to assess the phenotype of interest in a heterozygous state. Here, using inbred wild-type Drosophila strains, we assessed the phenotypic variation of six physiology and fitness traits: female fecundity, survival and intestinal mitosis upon oral infection, defecation rate and fecal pH upon oral infection, and terminal tracheal cell branching in hypoxia. Indeed, we found continuous variation in all traits tested. To estimate the extent to which small genetic background differences affected these traits, we assessed the effects of commonly used Drosophila UAS-RNAi transgenic strains and their backcrossed isogenized counterparts in the same assays. We tested 20 non-isogenic strains (10 KK and 10 GD) from the Vienna Drosophila Resource Center and their isogenic counterparts without Gal4 induction and found that the different phenotypes were variably sensitive to the genetic background. For example, survival upon infection and female fecundity exhibited differences in 50% and 40% of the tested isogenic vs. non-isogenic pairs, respectively, whereas all other phenotypes were affected in only 10-25% of the cases. We also observed that the genetic background affects Gal4 transgenes unpredictably. Thus, depending on the trait of interest, the genetic background of commonly used transgenic strains needs to be considered carefully during experimentation.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpredictable effects of the genetic background of transgenic lines in physiological quantitative traits

Evangelou

Ignatiou

Antoniou

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Drosophila Genetics Reference Panel (DGRP) collection corresponds to a set of >200 inbred sequenced fruit fly strains, which facilitate GWA studies (Mackay et al 2012; Huang et al 2014). GWAS analyses using the DGRP collection have identified significant genomic associations with a variety of fitness and physiology traits ranging from lifespan and sleep to abdominal pigmentation (Durham et al 2014; Ivanov et al 2015; Harbison et al 2013; Dembeck et al 2015; Sunaga et al 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unpredictable Effects of the Genetic Background of Transgenic Lines in Physiological Quantitative Traits

Evangelou¹,

Ignatiou²,

Antoniou³

et al. 2019

G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Physiology, fitness and disease phenotypes are complex traits exhibiting continuous variation in natural populations. To understand complex trait gene functions transgenic lines of undefined genetic background are often combined to assess quantitative phenotypes ignoring the impact of genetic polymorphisms. Here, we used inbred wild-type strains of the Drosophila Genetics Reference Panel to assess the phenotypic variation of six physiological and fitness traits, namely, female fecundity, survival and intestinal mitosis upon oral infection, defecation rate and fecal pH upon oral infection, and terminal tracheal cell branching in hypoxia. We found continuous variation in the approximately 150 strains tested for each trait, with extreme values differing by more than four standard deviations for all traits. In addition, we assessed the effects of commonly used Drosophila UAS-RNAi transgenic strains and their backcrossed isogenized counterparts, in the same traits plus baseline intestinal mitosis and tracheal branching in normoxia, in heterozygous conditions, when only half of the genetic background was different among strains. We tested 20 non-isogenic strains (10 KK and 10 GD) from the Vienna Drosophila Resource Center and their isogenized counterparts without Gal4 induction. Survival upon infection and female fecundity exhibited differences in 50% and 40% of the tested isogenic vs. non-isogenic pairs, respectively, whereas all other traits were affected in only 10–25% of the cases. When 11 isogenic and their corresponding non-isogenic UAS-RNAi lines were expressed ubiquitously with Gal4, 4 isogenic vs. non-isogenic pairs exhibited differences in survival to infection. Furthermore, when a single UAS-RNAi line was crossed with the same Gal4 transgene inserted in different genetic backgrounds, the quantitative variations observed were unpredictable on the basis of pure line performance. Thus, irrespective of the trait of interest, the genetic background of commonly used transgenic strains needs to be considered carefully during experimentation.

show abstract

Drosophilids with darker cuticle have higher body temperature under light

Freoa

Chevin

Christol

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cuticle pigmentation was shown to be associated with body temperature for several relatively large species of insects, but it was questioned for small insects. Here we used a thermal camera to assess the association between drosophilid cuticle pigmentation and body temperature increase when individuals are exposed to light. We compared mutants of large effects within species (Drosophila melanogaster ebony and yellow mutants). Then we analyzed the impact of naturally occurring pigmentation variation within species complexes (Drosophila americana/Drosophila novamexicana and Drosophila yakuba/Drosophila santomea). Finally we analyzed lines of D. melanogaster with moderate differences in pigmentation. We found significant differences in temperatures for each of the four pairs we analyzed. The temperature differences appeared to be proportional to the differently pigmented area: between Drosophila melanogaster ebony and yellow mutants or between Drosophila americana and Drosophila novamexicana, for which the whole body is differently pigmented, the temperature difference was around 0.6 °C ± 0.2 °C. By contrast, between D. yakuba and D. santomea or between Drosophila melanogaster Dark and Pale lines, for which only the posterior abdomen is differentially pigmented, we detected a temperature difference of about 0.14 °C ± 0.10 °C. This strongly suggests that cuticle pigmentation has ecological implications in drosophilids regarding adaptation to environmental temperature.

show abstract

Factors underlying natural variation in body pigmentation of <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>

Cited by 3 publications

References 42 publications

Unpredictable effects of the genetic background of transgenic lines in physiological quantitative traits

Unpredictable effects of the genetic background of transgenic lines in physiological quantitative traits

Unpredictable Effects of the Genetic Background of Transgenic Lines in Physiological Quantitative Traits

Drosophilids with darker cuticle have higher body temperature under light

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About