Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am doing a study on antioxidants and stress in fruit flies.
For this experiment, I need to stress out my fruit flies (but not kill them), and this will be a major part of my project. I was going to use heat, and put the fruit flies in an incubator at a certain heat for a certain period of time to stress them out.
However...... My teacher just told me I couldn't use this method. What else could I do to stress out my fruit flies (Drosophila Melanogaster)??? A quick response would be much appreciated.
Thank you so much.
-Raina

Hi Raina,

I did a search for 'drosophila stress response' and found one paper that used several different stressors:

J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2015 Oct 27. pii: glv193. [Epub ahead of print]
Age-related Decline of Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Young Drosophila melanogaster Adults. Colinet H, Chertemps T, Boulogne I, Siaussat D.

The researchers used several chemicals to stress the flies, but one that you could easily get is 3% hydrogen peroxide, which is available at Walmart and other stores. Here is the procedure from their Methods section:

"For H2O2, we followed exactly the same procedure: a first experiment with 1% H2O2 and 3% sucrose solution at 20°C (n = 100 flies/age) and a second experiment with 3% H2O2 and 3% sucrose solution at 25°C (n = 50 flies/age). The vials and filter papers were renewed every 2 days. For each condition, a control vial with 3% sucrose on the filter paper was used. The vials were inspected for mortality twice a day (8:00 and 18:00) for 10 consecutive days."

The vials used in the test contain a layer of plain agar on top of which is a filter paper circle soaked in the test solution. The flies are put into the vial and checked twice a day. The authors looked for death as the outcome so you might want to try a lower concentration of H2O2 or shorter exposure. What stress effects are you going to measure?

Let us know if this helps and if you have more questions.

Sybee