Specific Dietary Carbohydrates Differentially Influence the Life Span and Fecundity of Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster is a broadly used model for gerontological research. Many studies are dedicated to understanding nutritional effects on ageing; however, the influence of dietary carbohydrate type and dosage is still poorly understood. We show that among three carbohydrates tested, fructose, glucose, and sucrose, the latter decreased life span by 13%-27%, being present in concentrations of 2%-20% in the diet. Life-span shortening by sucrose was accompanied by an increase in age-independent mortality. Sucrose also dramatically decreased the fecundity of the flies. The differences in life span and fecundity were determined to be unrelated to differential carbohydrate ingestion. The highest mitochondrial protein density was observed in flies fed sucrose-containing diet. However, this parameter was not affected by carbohydrate amount in the diet. Fly sensitivity to oxidative stress, induced by menadione, was increased in aged flies and was slightly affected by type and concentration of carbohydrate. In general, it has been demonstrated that sucrose, commonly used in recipes of Drosophila laboratory food, may shorten life span and lower egg-laying capability on the diets with very low protein content.

Gut microbiota dictates the metabolic response ofDrosophilato diet

“…To our knowledge, the microbiota has not been considered previously in the many demonstrations of between-sex differences in Drosophila metabolism and metabolism gene expression patterns (Ayroles et al, 2009;Bauer et al, 2006;Bharathi et al, 2003;Greenberg et al, 2011;Jumbo-Lucioni et al, 2010;Lushchak et al, 2014;Scheitz et al, 2013), although there is evidence for sex-specific impacts of the microbiota on metabolic traits of the mouse (Markle et al, 2013). The processes contributing to interactions between the microbiota and host metabolism are likely multiple and interactive.…”

Fitness traits of Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae) after long-term laboratory rearing on different diets

“…In most nutritional studies on D. melanogaster, the quality of the diet is manipulated by altering the concentrations and ratios of yeast and sugar (Kristensen et al, 2011;Matzkin et al, 2011;Fanson et al, 2012;Güller et al, 2015), or by modifying the food by using different species of yeast (Anagnostou et al, 2010), dietary carbohydrates (Lushchak et al, 2014), lipids, vitamins (Reis, 2016) and food additives (Neethu et al, 2014). However, this study involved using diets that are modifi cations of this fl ies' natural food (tomato, banana, carrot and apple), prepared without adding sugar and yeast.…”

Longevity and stress resistance are affected by activation of TOR/Myc in progenitor cells of Drosophila gut

“…The food was changed every day and the number of eggs laid by individual flies were recorded [19,20]. Twenty flies were tested per genotype in two biological replicates.…”

“…In order to measure oxidative stress susceptibility, flies were fed with menadione in 5% sucrose [20]. There was no significant difference in oxidative stress resistance between transgenic and control flies ( Fig.…”