Investigador: Enrique Rodríguez, PhD
Departamento: Biología
Descripción: Drug of abuse such as alcohol produces long lasting changes in the brain reward circuitry. Alcohol is one of the world most abused drugs with a major health impact but the mechanisms by which these changes are produced remains unclear. Several internal and external factors such as stress, genetics, psychological, obesity, microbiome, and environment have been shown to influence alcohol consumption. The physiological and genetics complexity of the human brain have been a major problem to establish a clear pathway in the development of alcohol use disorder. Therefore there Is a need to study this phenomenon in less complex but useful model. Drosophila can serve as model to several human condition including alcohol abuse. Our long-term goal is to identify possible mechanism by which the diet modification alters both the alcohol tolerance, and the microbiota composition and how this interaction could be leading to alcohol abuse. Recent findings suggest that the gut microbiome can influence alcohol abuse and the diet influence both. Our specific aim is to Investigate the role of diet variation on the alcohol tolerance assay and on the gut microbiome composition. Here we propose to elucidate the role of a modified diet (High fat Diet and High Protein Diet) as an environmental factor to influence the alcohol tolerance and the gut microbiome in Drosophila. Also, we plan to study if the changes produced by the diet in the alcohol tolerance are dependent of the microbiome-host interactions. All stock will be maintained in Normal Diet (ND) at 25oC and 30-50% humidity. Flies will be collected at 0-5 days and transferred to separate vials with experimental diets for 7 days. The alcohol tolerance assay will be performed by injecting 0.5ml of 25% or 50% ethanol into each vial plug and saturate it. Every two minute the vial will be grasped, and the numbers of fly sedated will be counted until all flies are sedated. This procedure will be repeated 24 hrs. after to study the alcohol tolerance. To assess the role of the microbiome in the development of alcohol tolerance we plan to generate axenic like flies by adding an antibiotic cocktail to all diet treatments and the alcohol tolerance assay will be performed. To characterize the influence of the diet modification on the fly microbiome, the fly gut from all experimental and control group will be removed, DNA will be extracted and will be used for sequencing the V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA subunit (16S rRNA). By doing so, this study can help identify new causes and targets for AUD treatments.