Dietary composition regulates Drosophila mobility and cardiac physiology

Abstract

Summary The impact of dietary composition on exercise capacity is a subject of intense study in both humans and model organisms. Interactions between diet and genetics are a critical component in optimized dietary design. However, the genetic factors governing exercise response are still not well understood. The recent development of invertebrate models for endurance exercise is likely to facilitate study designs examining the conserved interactions between diet, exercise, and genetics. As a first step, we use the Drosophila model to describe here the effects of varying dietary composition on several physiological indices, including fatigue tolerance and climbing speed, cardiac performance, lipid storage and autophagy. We find that flies of two divergent genetic backgrounds optimize endurance and cardiac performance on relatively balanced low calorie diets. When flies are provided with unbalanced diets, diets higher in sugar than in yeast facilitate greater endurance at the expense of cardiac performance. Importantly, we find that dietary composition has a profound effect on various physiological indices, whereas total caloric intake per se has very little predictive value for performance. We also find that the effects of diet on endurance are completely reversible within 48 hours if flies are switched to a different diet.