New research from North Carolina State University and Reed College shows that when fruit flies are attacked by parasites¹ or bacteria they respond by producing offspring with greater genetic² variability. This extra genetic variability may give the offspring an increased chance of survival when faced with the same pathogens. These findings demonstrate that parents may purposefully alter the genotypes of their offspring. Fruit flies' reproductive cells are usually haploid, meaning that there is only one copy of each chromosome³ in the cell's nucleus⁴ instead of two. During meiosis, the form of cell division that creates eggs in females and sperm⁵ in males, female fruit flies produce eggs that contain only one set of chromosomes⁶ - each chromosome in the set may be a copy of the mother's chromosome or a copy of the father's chromosome. Or they may be a mixture of both chromosomes due to a process known as recombination. Under normal conditions each offspring of a female fruit fly has a 25 percent chance of getting a maternal⁷ copy of a chromosome, a 25 percent chance of receiving a paternal⁸ copy, and a 50 percent chance of receiving a recombinant chromosome.

 

In theory, under conditions in which organisms face new threats, such as those posed by parasites or pathogens, it could be advantageous⁹ to have offspring with more recombinant chromosomes. These offspring would have more novel combinations of alleles (versions of particular genes), increasing the chances that at least some of them would be well adapted to these threats. 

 

Nadia Singh, an assistant professor of biological sciences at NC State, and her colleague and co-author of a paper describing the work, Todd Schlenke of Reed College, wanted to see if fruit flies have evolved such a strategy for coping with infections by bacteria or parasitic¹⁰ wasps¹². Singh and Schlenke exposed fruit flies to two different pathogenic bacteria, as well as to the parasitic wasp¹¹ Leptopilina clavipes, which lays its eggs inside fruit fly larvae¹³ and devours¹⁴ the fly from the inside out unless it is killed by the fly immune system. 

 

The findings, which appear in Science, were surprising. Females who survived bacteria or wasp infection produced a much greater proportion of recombinant offspring than control, uninfected flies. The surviving mothers made their offspring more diverse.

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