Publications by authors named "Will Barr"
Drosophila sechellia is an island endemic host specialist that has evolved to consume the toxic fruit of Morinda citrifolia, also known as noni fruit. Recent studies by our group and others have examined genome-wide gene expression responses of fruit flies to individual highly abundant compounds found in noni responsible for the fruit's unique chemistry and toxicity. In order to relate these reductionist experiments to the gene expression responses to feeding on noni fruit itself, we fed rotten noni fruit to adult female D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- - Drosophila sechellia, a fruit fly native to the Seychelles, has adapted to eat the toxic fruit of Morinda citrifolia by developing resistance to its harmful compounds, octanoic and hexanoic acids.
- - Research is focused on how D. sechellia has evolved resistance specifically to hexanoic acid, as previous studies have primarily tackled octanoic acid resistance.
- - By exposing D. sechellia and related species to hexanoic acid and analyzing their gene expression, the study found that while generalist flies activated many detoxification genes, D. sechellia downregulated immune-related genes, revealing unique adaptations to its specialized diet.