Genetic variation in ethanol tolerance in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

Alexus Hansen, Sam Kline Author

04/05/2021 Added

12 Plays

Description

Effects of varying ethanol concentration on D. melanogaster survival and tolerance.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:02.210]Hi. My name is Sam Klein. And my name is Alexus Hansen.
[00:00:06.356]We did research on the genetic variation and ethanol tolerance in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
[00:00:13.862]The environment to which animals live is very diverse and toxins may alter the lifestyle of certain organisms.
[00:00:20.120]Although toxins are found in every environment, the type of toxins and the concentration very across habitats
[00:00:26.233]Drosophila melanogaster, otherwise known as the common fruit fly is a model organism that can be found in every single continent across the world
[00:00:34.974]these flies are known to consume a large portion of fruit in their diet
[00:00:39.277]And these fruits contain varying amounts of ethanol.
[00:00:44.486]This photo depicts Drosophila melanogaster larvae before they pupate.
[00:00:50.902]Since these flies can be found in habitats all around the world, they're exposed to many different environmental toxins.
[00:00:57.835]Ethanol a natural toxin can be used by the fly as a source of energy at low concentrations, depending on geographical location
[00:01:05.450]some flies naturally feed on fruits that have higher concentrations of ethanol than others.
[00:01:10.565]The purpose of this study is to determine whether tolerance to ethanol is correlated to ethanol prevalence.
[00:01:18.670]To do this, six populations of Drosophila melanogaster were collected from paired orchards and vineyards in Indiana
[00:01:25.650]due to their large difference in ethanol concentration found inside the food
[00:01:30.896]from these populations 10 isofemale lines were generated from each population.
[00:01:37.699]Here are some pictures of the locations that we took the flies from.
[00:01:43.231]On the left we have an orchard and on the right we have a vineyard with apples and grapes, respectively
[00:01:50.040]we predicted that since at vineyards they typically produce alcoholic drinks
[00:01:55.207]that we expected more ethanol in this environment and also predicted that the flies at the vineyards would have a higher tolerance tolerance for ethanol.
[00:02:05.798]We subjected the different populations of flies to different concentrations of ethanol and measured
[00:02:11.368]their development time, LD 50, and pupation height
[00:02:14.995]LD 50 is the amount of substance required to kill 50% of the test population, and it also represents our survival ratio
[00:02:25.268]Here in this in this graph, it shows the lowest and highest LD 50s that we collected so far.
[00:02:31.588]They help us visualize the LD 50s which again like Sam said, are the concentrations at which 50% of the flies are killed.
[00:02:39.243]We collected data for different ethanol concentrations and represent the 50% survival mark with the red line across the graphs.
[00:02:46.841]So here in the y axis the proportion dead. And on x axis, the percent ethanol
[00:02:53.490]And as this graph on the left shows the LD 50 for this population was at the 6%, whereas this one, we didn't have it in any of our treatments.
[00:03:03.672]So this is saying that the left graph's population's ethanol tolerance is lower than the graph on the right.
[00:03:16.290]And this graph here shows the six different populations we have.
[00:03:21.343]And then, where they were from so we have three populations from an orchard and three populations from a winery
[00:03:27.928]and then on the x axis, or on the y axis, you can see the LD 50.
[00:03:32.072]If you compare the three populations from the orchard to the three populations in the winery, you'll see that there's no significant difference in the LD 50 between the different populations.
[00:03:43.762]So, our preliminary data shows that while the populations vary in ethanol tolerance.
[00:03:49.408]There is no difference in ethanol tolerance between the populations from the orchard versus the winery.
[00:03:58.296]This research is one step closer to determining how a variety of toxins affect Drosophila melonogaster.
[00:04:05.215]But another question we would like to investigate in the future is whether the variation and ethanol tolerance maps onto the tolerance of other toxins.
[00:04:13.415]We would like to give a special thanks to Dr. Megan Kobiela, Dr. Kristi Montooth, and the UCARE program
[00:04:19.308]for providing us with this research opportunity.
[00:04:22.428]Dr. Kobiela allowed us to collaborate with her on her research and helped us throughout the process.
[00:04:28.098]Dr. Montooth welcomed us into her lab and supported our research endeavors.
[00:04:31.968]And UCARE helped fund our project.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Genetic variation in ethanol tolerance in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments