Meeting Abstract
Vespa Amino Acid Mixture (VAAM) is a unique blend of amino acids found in the saliva of larval Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) that they pass to their parents through trophallaxis, apparently to upregulate their metabolic function and improve endurance. In a laboratory setting, VAAM increases ATP production in both yeast and house fly (Musca domestica) models, but subsequent tests have shown that the consequences at the organismal level vary wildly across trials. In Drosophila, VAAM tends to improve locomotion performance and endurance, albeit at the cost of accelerated mortality, presumably due to its deleterious impact on mitochondrial function. However, in some trials, organisms experience significantly extended lifespan in response to VAAM treatment. VAAM may also have potential to affect an organism across generations, as a single dose of VAAM was found to significantly increase locomotion performance in the 2nd generation offspring of treated fruit flies in several studies. However, these results are variable across trials and have proven difficult to replicate. In this poster I will discuss all the findings of VAAM across several studies and interpret them in the context of mitochondrial function, bioenergetics, and transgenerational epigenetics.
