Caffeine Used On Fruit Flies to Investigate Insecticide Resistance Genes

Insect crop pests have been gradually developing resistance to chemical pesticides for more than fifty years. The genes of fruit flies (Drosophilia melangaster) were analyzed by scientists at the University of Kansas to determine the loci in which these resistance traits reside. They used caffeine as a chemical substitute for a pesticide, a common practice in analyzing xenobiotics.


The response or resistance to caffeine was tested in 1,700 flies, and they were able to map ten trait loci. In one of the stretches of DNA mapped they identified two genes that code for enzymes involved with unarming toxic compounds: Cyp12d1-d and Cyp12d1-p, members of the cytochrome P450 gene family. These two genes contribute over 10 percent of the variation of fruit flies' resistance to caffeine.
It is important to understand the nature of insect's resistance to pesticides because their inheritable ability to overcome chemicals causes all kinds of issues: It increases our need to strengthen chemical pesticides, which we inevitably ingest. Further, the climbing strength of these pesticides have environmental effects on the local soil and fauna/flora. And the most obvious, it can be detrimental to crop yield, which affects food prices and availability.


Article:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327101417.htm
Related Article (more info on insecticide resistance): http://abacus.gene.ucl.ac.uk/jim/pap/mallet89tree.pdf