FlySilico: Flux balance modeling of Drosophila larval growth and resource allocation.

Organisms depend on a highly connected and regulated network of biochemical reactions fueling life sustaining and growth promoting functions. While details of this metabolic network are well established, knowledge of the superordinate regulatory design principles is limited. Here, we investigated by iterative wet lab and modeling experiments the resource allocation process during the larval development of Drosophila melanogaster.

The impact of genome variation and diet on the metabolic phenotype and microbiome composition of Drosophila melanogaster.

The metabolic phenotype of an organism depends on a complex regulatory network, which integrates the plethora of intrinsic and external information and prioritizes the flow of nutrients accordingly. Given the rise of metabolic disorders including obesity, a detailed understanding of this regulatory network is in urgent need. Yet, our level of understanding is far from completeness and complicated by the discovery of additional layers in metabolic regulation, such as the impact of the microbial community present in the gut on the hosts' energy storage levels.