Effect of Dietary Restrictions on the Lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster

by Bella Vieser (VI), Kimberly Wang (VI), Mirika Jambudi (V), Lauren Kim (V), Kate Marine (IV), Dr. D’Ausilio, Dr. Pousont

Previous research has proven that a calorie-restricted diet increases the lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster. Our experiment aims to test the proportionality between the diet-induced lifespan elongation and the flies’ cognitive skills. Our experiment consists of two groups of flies: a control group fed molasses-based fly food (control) and an experimental group fed diet food (dilution of the regular food with an agar solution). After breeding flies on the two diets, we initially planned to test the memory of both groups using an odor T-maze. Last year, we ran a trial to test the lifespan of flies fed either the control diet or the calorie-restricted diet. Ultimately, the data supports our hypothesis that a calorie-restrictive diet correlates with an increase in the lifespan of drosophila melanogaster (Figure 1). After our initial hypothesis has been confirmed, we planned to continue to experiment with the odor T-maze to determine how cognitive and memory abilities correlate with this proven extended lifespan. However, we could not follow through with this plan due to limited materials. Therefore, this year, we continued to keep our fly stocks running as we planned to test the effect of new dietary supplements on the flies: including additional phosphate, nitrate, and sulfate.

Figure 1: The results are a composition of data from 9 different vials: 4 control vials and 5 calorie-restricted vials from the lifespan experiment. The total number of flies remaining in control and calorie-restricted vials were counted over time, and the data standardized to show the percentage of flies remaining in each group over a period of 100 days. Over time, the difference between the number of flies alive in the control and calorie-restricted vials increased. As the number of control flies approached zero, the calorie-restricted diet flies still had 1/3 of their total population alive. The data indicates that a calorie-restricted diet keeps the flies alive for longer than the control diet does. 28