Understanding balanced diets for animal growth through a prey-predator interspecies genetic approach

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17KT0018
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 特設分野
• Research Field: Constructive Systems Biology
• Research Institution: Kyoto University
• Principal Investigator: Uemura Tadashi 京都大学, 生命科学研究科, 教授 (80213396)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-07-18 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 栄養 / 成長 / 生物間相互作用 / マルチオミクス / 共生微生物叢

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Eating “balanced diets” is believed to be one of the most critical environmental determinants for infants to grow into healthy adults. However, a big challenge is to systematically survey the contributions of nutrient compositions to the growth. To overcome this difficulty, we took advantage of a prey-predator combination of microbes and larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The microbes employed are composed of two classes: a single-gene knockout collection of budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is one of the major ingredients of laboratory media, and yeast and bacterial strains isolated from symbiotic microbiota in larval natural food sources. We fed larvae with each microbial strain and isolated those that cause growth retardation and/or decreased pupation rate. Using multi-omics approaches of both microbes and larvae, we are characterizing features of the “balanced” nutrient composition in the microbes and responsive mechanisms in larvae driving growth.

Free Research Field

構成的システム生物学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

幼い個体が栄養を摂取して健康な成体となり、次世代を残すことは、ヒトを含む全ての動物種の存続にとって必須の道のりである。多種類の栄養成分の量の組み合わせは無限にあり、成長や病態に与える因果関係を体系的に調べるのは容易ではない。ショウジョウバエは、ヒトまで保存された遺伝子機能や臓器間ネットワークを持ち、栄養依存的な生理機能調節における普遍的なメカニズムの理解にも大きく貢献している。本研究で新たに明らかにされる栄養成分とそれに対する応答機構が、ヒトの栄養への適応機構の理解につながることが期待できる。