Meeting Abstract
Metabolic rates reflect the overall energetic state of the organism and have been correlated with changes at the cellular level and with an organism’s pace of life. Metabolic rates decrease during senescence and starvation, while energetically demanding tasks stimulate increased metabolic rates. Here I use a well-characterized mitochondrial-nuclear genotype of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, that has compromised aerobic energy metabolism to test for effects of compromised energy metabolism on infection and life-history traits using a natural bacterial pathogen Providencia rettgeri. We have previously shown that this mitochondrial-nuclear genotype compromises survival after infection with P. rettgeri and underlies a tradeoff between immunity and reproduction in females. Here we compare the metabolic rate during the timeframe of infection in this genotype to that of a control mitochondrial-nuclear genotype and a Rel mutant, which has reduced immune responses. The measurement of both O2 consumption and CO2 production during a time when immune responses should be occurring allows us to test for dynamic changes in the respiratory quotient (RQ), providing insight into the types of cellular resources being catabolized during infection.
