Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Biological Sciences

First Advisor

Alissa Armstrong

Abstract

Diet impacts organismal health. Sub-optimal diets, such as obesogenic diets, can lead to long-term detrimental health effects. Over 60% of adults in the United States are overweight or obese, however the link between obesity and associated disease, such as chronic inflammation, remains unclear. Drosophila melanogaster is a useful in vivo model to better understand the effects of obesogenic diets on the immune response and begin examining the potential therapeutics of dietary plant compounds. Thus far, we find there is a difference in lifespan and reproduction patterns across the different control lines fed different standard diets. Oregon-R and yw control lines have a longer lifespan on a molasses diet, while w1118 control line has the shortest lifespan. A high fecundity rate was observed in all control lines fed a molasses-based diet. We will also identify an obesogenic dietary condition that induces immune responses in adult flies by measuring antimicrobial peptide production in flies fed high-sugar or high-fat diets. Currently, we are working to define a diet that induces immune responses in adult flies by measuring immune response pathway activity and antimicrobial peptide production in flies fed high- sugar or high-fat diets. In future studies, we will use this approach to screen botanical supplements for their ability to suppress the diet-activated immune response. We hope that this work will inform the development of treatments for diet-induced obesity- associated diseases.

Rights

© 2026, David Jonith Duncan

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