Meeting Abstract

66.5  Monday, Jan. 6 09:00  FROST: The red herring gene of insect cold tolerance? SINCLAIR, B.J.*; GRAETHER, S.P.; UDAKA, H.; Univ Western Ontario; Univ Guelph; Univ Western Ontario bsincla7@uwo.ca

The gene FROST (Fst) is one of the most compelling candidates for a cold tolerance-related gene in Drosophila. Fst is upregulated in response to a brief cold exposure in all life stages and most species of Drosophila, and is the only gene that has been consistently associated with cold exposure in microarray, RNA-seq, and QTL studies. However, Fst polymorphisms are not associated with cold tolerance in a gradient in Australia, and knockdown of Fst does not appear to affect several different measures of cold tolerance in Drosophila. We will discuss the temporal, spatial, and phylogenetic expression of Fst in Drosophila, as well as the putative structure of the protein. We will then consider the potential roles of the Frost protein, and what this tells us about our approach to identifying candidate genes and about the biology of insect cold tolerance in general.