Assessment of Chemical Toxicity in Adult <em>Drosophila Melanogaster</em>

Abstract

Human industries generate hundreds of thousands of chemicals, many of which have not been adequately studied for environmental safety or effects on human health.This deficit of chemical safety information is exacerbated by current testing methods in mammals that are expensive, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. Recently, scientists and regulators have been working to develop new approach methodologies (NAMs) for chemical safety testing that are cheaper, more rapid, and reduce animal suffering. One of the key NAMs to emerge is the use of invertebrate organisms as replacements for mammalian models to elucidate conserved chemical modes of action across distantly related species, including humans. To advance these efforts, here, we describe a method that uses the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to assess chemical safety. The protocol describes a simple, rapid, and inexpensive procedure to measure the viability and feeding behavior of exposed adult flies. In addition, the protocol can be easily adapted to generate samples for genomic and metabolomic approaches.Overall, the protocol represents an important step forward in establishing Drosophila as a standard model for use in precision toxicology. safety testing in these systems is expensive, time-consuming, and often causes unacceptable levels of suffering to the test animal 9 .

Auxin exposure disrupts feeding behavior and fatty acid metabolism in adult Drosophila

“…Dose response curves were performed as previously described (HOLSOPPLE et al 2023 ). Briefly, zero-to-two-day old flies were transferred to bottles containing fresh BDSC food and aged for two days.…”

Evaluation of Verbascum flower extracts as a natural source of pigments with potential health benefits

“…The toxicity test on Drosophila melanogaster flies is a widely used and viable model for verifying the toxic activities of substances. 23 Toxicity was tested through mortality, which was verified according to the number of fly deaths when they were in contact with 1 mg of extracts per ml of fly food matrix. In the mortality test, the extract had no potential to kill flies (Fig.…”

Perspectives on the Drosophila melanogaster Model for Advances in Toxicological Science

“…However, despite the growing use of metabolomics among Drosophila researchers, very few Drosophila toxicology studies examine the metabolome (for examples see Brinzer et al, 2015; Li et al., 2020). Considering that the conserved nature of Drosophila metabolism holds the potential to discover novel metabolic mechanisms by which toxicants disrupt disease‐causing metabolic pathways (Colbourne et al., 2022; Holsopple et al., 2023), metabolomics must become common practice in fly toxicology research.…”

“…Most studies measure lethality (e.g., LD50) as a measure for toxicity. A simple and rapid screen for toxicity in flies has been developed that uses toxin‐impregnated filter paper discs to assess lethality (Holsopple et al., 2023). Toxic effects at sublethal doses of toxicants can be quantified using a variety of behavioral assays (see Measuring Toxic Exposure in the Fly and Fig.…”

“…In this regard, long‐term studies should consider bulk purchasing any seasonally harvested dietary ingredient (e.g., cornmeal, molasses, malt, soy flour) to ensure consistency across experiments, as natural variations within these dietary components can affect the metabolome. We would recommend using a defined or semidefined diet for metabolomic studies, such as previously described recipes for semidefined diets (Reis, 2016), holidic diets (Piper et al., 2014), or a recently described liquid diet designed for adult toxicology exposures (Holsopple et al., 2023).…”