Malathion QTL mapping in Drosophila melanogaster

The goal was to identify Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) contributing to malathion insecticide resistance in Drosophila melanogaster. The project employs a bulked phenotyping/genotyping-by-sequencing strategy. We start from an outbred/segregating "base" population derived by mixing a series of Drosophila Synthetic Population Resource (DSPR) 8-way RILs (Recombinant Inbred Lines), select animals that survive a malathion challenge, then sequence these pools of animals, along with matched control pools (animals arbitrarily harvested from the base population). Following pooled sequencing we discover cover QTL as allele frequency shifts between malathion selected and control groups. We successfully identified 2 QTL via this experiment.