A low sugar diet enhancesDrosophilabody size in males and females via sex-specific mechanisms

Abstract

In Drosophila, changes to dietary protein elicit different body size responses between the sexes. Whether this sex difference in nutrient-dependent body size regulation extends to other nutrients, such as dietary sugar, remains unclear. Here, we show that reducing dietary sugar enhanced body size in Drosophila male and female larvae. Indeed, the largest body size was found in larvae reared in a diet without added sugar. Despite the equivalent body size effects of a low sugar diet between males and females, we detected sex-specific changes to the insulin/insulin-like growth factor (IIS) and target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling pathways. Further, we show that the metabolic changes observed in larvae reared on a low sugar diet differ between the sexes. Thus, despite identical phenotypic responses to dietary sugar in males and females, distinct changes to cell signaling pathways and whole-body metabolism were associated with the increased body size in each sex. This highlights the importance of including both sexes in all mechanistic studies on larval growth, as males and females may use different molecular and metabolic mechanisms to achieve similar phenotypic outcomes.

Sex-Specific Plasticity Explains Genetic Variation in Sexual Size Dimorphism in Drosophila

“…An added nuance, however, is that the effect of nutrition on body size depends not just on food quantity but also food quality. Specifically, females, but not males, reduce body size when reared on high sugar diets ( [40]although see [39]), and this appears to reflect sex-specific differences in the activity of the TOR-signalling pathway [41,42].…”