Genetic bases and robustness of the toxicological response to spinosad and lambda‐cyhalothrin in Drosophila melanogaster

Insecticides are valuable and widely used tools for the control of insect pests.However, we know very little about the genes and processes involved in the key stepsof the poisoning sequence. Besides, the excessive and indiscriminate use of insecticidesis generating mechanisms of resistance in various insect pests. To improve our understandingof insecticide toxicity, we need a powerful model organism to help describe theprocesses underlying insecticide poisoning and the use of genomic tools to identify andanalyze the genetic basis of the toxicological response of the insecticides. In this context,we associate variation in toxicological response with genomic variation, to identifygenetic polymorphisms underlying the different steps of the insect (genotype)-response(phenotype)-insecticide (environment) interaction. We investigate the genetic factors involvedin the toxicological response of D. melanogaster lines when exposed to spinosadand lambda-cyhalothrin through the measured of KT50 in adult males. Since the genomesof all lines evaluated are completely sequenced, we performed a Genome Wide AssociationStudy that enabled us to identify genetic polymorphisms and candidate genes responsiblefor the overall phenotypic variation. Most of the candidate genes detected exhibitedinsecticide-specific effect and play roles in the toxicodynamics as AstC-R1, Dh44-R, stan,Ca-β, AgmNAT, Acox57D-d, Btk, CarT, dpr8, Pkd2, and Shab and the toxicokinetics likefor example ckd, Hr38, robo2, Toll-4, Eglp2, and Prip of spinosad and lambda-cyhalothrin.Finally our results suggest that in the case of lambda-cyhalothrin genotypes exhibitin