Skip to main content
ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Hilo, Hawaii » Daniel K. Inouye U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center » Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #302325
Title: Diet-induced over-expression of flightless-I protein and its relation to flightlessness in Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata

Author
item CHO, IL KYU - University Of Hawaii
item Chang, Chiou
item LI, QING XIAO - University Of Hawaii

Submitted to: PLOS ONE
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/12/2013
Publication Date: 12/3/2013
Citation: Cho, I., Chang, C.L., Li, Q. 2013. Diet-induced over-expression of flightless-I protein and its relation to flightlessness in Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata. PLoS One. 8(12):e81099.

Interpretive Summary: Tephritid fruit flies are economically significant pests worldwide. Its control mainly relies on sterile insect technique (SIT). SIT requires continuous mass-rearing, sterilization of adult flies, and release of sterilized male flies into fields to compete with wild male flies for female flies. A female mates with a sterile male will not produce offspring. Repeated release of sterile males can effectively suppress the population. To rear healthy medfly for field release, research has been focused on understanding of nutrient requirement using a liquid diet. We found an increased medfly flightness when the larvae were fed with a fatty acid deficient liquid diet in the present study. The objectives of this study were to identify differentially expressed proteins and compare protein profiles in pupae of their larvae reared on the standard mill feed diet (diet A) and a fatty acid deficient liquid diet (diet B) and to understand how the responded proteins interact within protein networks in medfly pupae and possible link between nutritional deficiency, fli-I and the human disease such as SMS. The result suggested that down-regulation of the Wnt/wingless signaling pathway, which consequently may result in flightlessness in pupae B. The fli-I gene is known to be located within the Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS) region on chromosome 17, and thus, we speculate that nutritional deficiency might induce over-expression of fli-I (or fli-I gene) and be associated with human SMS. However, more evidences would be needed to confirm our speculation. To our knowledge, this is the first study of effects of dietary nutrients on over-expression of fli-I and medfly flight ability

Technical Abstract: Two groups of medfly larvae were reared with two identical component diets except one with fatty acids (diet A) and another without it (diet B). Adults from larvae reared on diet B demonstrated 20+8% of normal flight ability, whereas those from larvae reared on diet A displayed full flight ability of 97+1%. We hypothesized that the flightlessness may be caused by over-expression of flightless I protein (fli-I) in the pupal stage. Proteomes were profiled to compare two groups of medfly pupae using shotgun proteomics to study dietary effects on flight ability. Differential protein profiles indicate that nutritional deficiency induced over-expression of flightless-I protein (fli-I) in medfly. All proteins were subjected to Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) to create 13 biological networks and 17 pathways of interacting protein clusters in human ortholog.