Population genomics of evolutionary response to nutritional stress in Drosophila

The project will focus on the genomic bases of tolerance to chronic larval malnutrition in Drosophila. It will use Illumina cDNA sequencing (RNAseq) to study changes in gene expression profiles, coding polymorphisms, and splicing variants resulting from >100 generations of experimental evolution under nutritional stress, aiming to identify candidate molecular mechanisms of larval malnutrition tolerance. It has been increasingly recognized that responses to nutritional stress during development may have far-reaching consequences for adult life, including the rate of aging. At the same time, mechanisms of responses to nutritional environment seem highly conserved. Thus understanding how evolution shapes these responses is likely to throw light on early-life determinants of human aging and metabolic disease.