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Quantifying Drosophila food intake: comparative analysis of current methodology

Nature Methods volume 11, pages 535–540 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Food intake is a fundamental parameter in animal studies. Despite the prevalent use of Drosophila in laboratory research, precise measurements of food intake remain challenging in this model organism. Here, we compare several common Drosophila feeding assays: the capillary feeder (CAFE), food labeling with a radioactive tracer or colorimetric dye and observations of proboscis extension (PE). We show that the CAFE and radioisotope labeling provide the most consistent results, have the highest sensitivity and can resolve differences in feeding that dye labeling and PE fail to distinguish. We conclude that performing the radiolabeling and CAFE assays in parallel is currently the best approach for quantifying Drosophila food intake. Understanding the strengths and limitations of methods for measuring food intake will greatly advance Drosophila studies of nutrition, behavior and disease.

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Figure 1: Assessment of feeding assays using a compensatory-feeding paradigm.
Figure 2: Comparison of feeding assays on flies of different genders and mating status.
Figure 3: Feeding measurements using pairs of assays simultaneously.
Figure 4: Performance of Drosophila feeding assays.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Piper and L. Partridge (University College London) for the Dahomey fly line and K.D. Bruce, R. Yamada and K.R. Murphy (The Scripps Research Institute) for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (R00AG030493 and R21DK092735), an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging award and a Glenn Foundation for Medical Research Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging (W.W.J.).

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Author notes

  1. Gil B Carvalho & Angela M Phillips

    Present address: Present addresses: Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA (G.B.C.), Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (A.M.P.).,

  2. Sonali A Deshpande, Gil B Carvalho and Ariadna Amador: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Metabolism and Aging, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, Florida, USA

    Sonali A Deshpande, Gil B Carvalho, Ariadna Amador, Angela M Phillips, Sany Hoxha, Keith J Lizotte & William W Ja

  2. Scripps Graduate Program, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, Florida, USA

    Ariadna Amador, Sany Hoxha & William W Ja

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  1. Sonali A Deshpande
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Contributions

All authors designed and carried out experiments. S.A.D., G.B.C., A.A., A.M.P., S.H. and W.W.J. also analyzed data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to William W Ja.

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Deshpande, S., Carvalho, G., Amador, A. et al. Quantifying Drosophila food intake: comparative analysis of current methodology. Nat Methods 11, 535–540 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2899

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