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Compensatory ingestion upon dietary restriction in Drosophila melanogaster

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Abstract

Dietary restriction extends the lifespan of numerous, evolutionarily diverse species1. In D. melanogaster, a prominent model for research on the interaction between nutrition and longevity, dietary restriction is typically based on medium dilution, with possible compensatory ingestion commonly being neglected. Possible problems with this approach are revealed by using a method for direct monitoring of D. melanogaster feeding behavior. This demonstrates that dietary restriction elicits robust compensatory changes in food consumption. As a result, the effect of medium dilution is overestimated and, in certain cases, even fully compensated for. Our results strongly indicate that feeding behavior and nutritional composition act concertedly to determine fly lifespan. Feeding behavior thus emerges as a central element in D. melanogaster aging.

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Figure 1: Regulation of feeding behavior in response to dietary modulation.
Figure 2: Feeding behavior influences D. melanogaster lifespan.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by a Lawrence L. and Audrey W. Ferguson Fellowship from the Caltech Division of Biology to G.B.C., a grant from the American Federation for Aging Research and a postdoctoral fellowship from the John Douglas French Foundation for Alzheimer's Research to P.K., and grants to S.B. from the US National Institutes of Health (AG16630, AG24366 and DK070154), the National Science Foundation (MCB-0418479) and the Ellison foundation.

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  1. Gil B Carvalho, Pankaj Kapahi and Seymour Benzer: The authors presently are in the Division of Biology 156-29, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. benzer@caltech.edu

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  1. the Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, 94945, California, USA

    Pankaj Kapahi

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  1. Gil B Carvalho
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Carvalho, G., Kapahi, P. & Benzer, S. Compensatory ingestion upon dietary restriction in Drosophila melanogaster. Nat Methods 2, 813–815 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth798

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