Abstract
A critical requirement for research using model organisms is a well-defined and consistent diet. There is currently no complete chemically defined (holidic) diet available for Drosophila melanogaster. We describe a holidic medium that is equal in performance to an oligidic diet optimized for adult fecundity and lifespan. This holidic diet supports development over multiple generations but at a reduced rate. Over 7 years of experiments, the holidic diet yielded more consistent experimental outcomes than did oligidic food for egg laying by females. Nutrients and drugs were more available to flies in holidic medium and, similar to dietary restriction on oligidic food, amino acid dilution increased fly lifespan. We used this holidic medium to investigate amino acid–specific effects on food-choice behavior and report that folic acid from the microbiota is sufficient for Drosophila development.
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Change history
08 August 2014
In the version of this article initially published, funding information for L.P. was omitted. The author acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (0315893B/Sybacol (Systems Biology of Ageing Cologne)). The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
19 October 2014
In the version of this article initially published, only one corresponding author was listed (M.D.W.P.). L.P. has been added as a corresponding author for this article. The relevant contact information is partridge@age.mpg.de. This information has been added to the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the following funding: the Royal Society (UF100158), and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK (BB/I011544/1) (M.D.W.P.); Foundation for Science and Technology (postdoctoral fellowship SFRH/BPD/78947/2011) and European Molecular Biology Organization (long-term postdoctoral fellowship ALTF 1602-2011) (R.L.-G.); Alzheimer's Research, UK (F.K.); Champalimaud Foundation, the Bial foundation and the Foundation for Science and Technology (grant PTDC/BIA-BCM/118684/2010) (C.R.); the Wellcome Trust UK (098565/Z/12/Z), Max Planck Society and the European Research Council under the European Union′s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), European Research Council grant agreement 268739 and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (0315893B/Sybacol (Systems Biology of Ageing Cologne)) (L.P.). For this work we used the Drosophila Aging Core of the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Biology of Aging, funded by the US National Institute of Aging (P30-AG-013283) (S.D.P.).
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M.D.W.P. and L.P. conceived and developed the project, and wrote the manuscript. M.D.W.P., R.L.-G., M.Y., X.H., N.J.L., M.P.H., C.H., G.A.S., C.N. and F.K. performed experiments. All authors contributed to data analysis and interpretation.
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Piper, M., Blanc, E., Leitão-Gonçalves, R. et al. A holidic medium for Drosophila melanogaster. Nat Methods 11, 100–105 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2731
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2731
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