Examining Fruit Flies with a Glycolytic Deficiency for Infection Susceptibility

Individuals with a disruption in glycolysis often exhibit susceptibility to infection. This research focuses on Drosophila melanogaster with a mutant TPI allele that disrupts glycolysis. It is not clear if these flies exhibit the infection susceptibility observed in humans. If so, then these mutant flies may be a model for developing a therapy for infection susceptibility in humans with glycolytic deficiencies. The hypothesis for this experiment is that TPI deficient flies should die when challenged with bacteria. To evaluate infection susceptibility a needle will be flame sterilized and dipped into a bacterial culture or negative control (sterile PBS). The fly will then be poked in the center of the abdomen with the infected needle, and then incubated at twenty‐three degrees Celsius. The number of dead flies will be counted every twelve hours for a seventy‐two hour period. This study focuses on bacterial challenges from E. coli , S. aureaus and P. aeruginosa cultures.