Dietary live yeast alters metabolic profiles, protein biosynthesis and thermal stress tolerance of Drosophila melanogaster

The impact of nutritional factors on insect's life-history traits such as reproduction and lifespan has been excessively examined; however, nutritional determinant of insect's thermal tolerance has not received a lot of attention. Dietary live yeast represents a prominent source of proteins and amino acids for laboratory-reared drosophilids. In this study, Drosophila melanogaster adults were fed on diets supplemented or not with live yeast. We hypothesized that manipulating nutritional conditions through live yeast supplementation would translate into altered physiology and stress tolerance. We verified how live yeast supplementation affected body mass characteristics, total lipids and proteins, metabolic profiles and cold tolerance (acute and chronic stress). Females fed with live yeast had increased body mass and contained more lipids and proteins. Using GC/MS profiling, we found distinct metabolic fingerprints according to nutritional conditions. Metabolite pathway enrichment analysis corroborated that live yeast supplementation was associated with amino acid and protein biosyntheses. The cold assays revealed that the presence of dietary live yeast greatly promoted cold tolerance. Hence, this study conclusively demonstrates a significant interaction between nutritional conditions and thermal tolerance.