1. α-amanitin resistance in Drosophila melanogaster: A genome-wide association approach.
- Author
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Mitchell CL, Latuszek CE, Vogel KR, Greenlund IM, Hobmeier RE, Ingram OK, Dufek SR, Pecore JL, Nip FR, Johnson ZJ, Ji X, Wei H, Gailing O, and Werner T
- Subjects
- Animals, Crosses, Genetic, Drosophila Proteins metabolism, Endocytosis, Gene Expression Profiling, Gene Expression Regulation, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Variation, Larva drug effects, Low Density Lipoprotein Receptor-Related Protein-2 metabolism, Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis, Pesticides chemistry, Phenotype, RNA analysis, TOR Serine-Threonine Kinases metabolism, Taiwan, Alpha-Amanitin pharmacology, Drosophila melanogaster drug effects, Drosophila melanogaster genetics, Drug Resistance
- Abstract
We investigated the mechanisms of mushroom toxin resistance in the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) fly lines, using genome-wide association studies (GWAS). While Drosophila melanogaster avoids mushrooms in nature, some lines are surprisingly resistant to α-amanitin-a toxin found solely in mushrooms. This resistance may represent a pre-adaptation, which might enable this species to invade the mushroom niche in the future. Although our previous microarray study had strongly suggested that pesticide-metabolizing detoxification genes confer α-amanitin resistance in a Taiwanese D. melanogaster line Ama-KTT, none of the traditional detoxification genes were among the top candidate genes resulting from the GWAS in the current study. Instead, we identified Megalin, Tequila, and widerborst as candidate genes underlying the α-amanitin resistance phenotype in the North American DGRP lines, all three of which are connected to the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway. Both widerborst and Tequila are upstream regulators of TOR, and TOR is a key regulator of autophagy and Megalin-mediated endocytosis. We suggest that endocytosis and autophagy of α-amanitin, followed by lysosomal degradation of the toxin, is one of the mechanisms that confer α-amanitin resistance in the DGRP lines.
- Published
- 2017
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