Response to copper in Drosophila melanogaster

The genetic architecture of resistance to heavy metals is complex and influenced by a combination of allelic and expression variation. Copper presents an interesting case of a heavy metal that is both required at low concentrations as an essential heavy metal and that plays an important role as an environmental pollutant. Using a large, multi-parental mapping population developed in the Drosophila model system, we combine quantitative trait locus mapping, RNA sequencing, and an assessment of the behavioral response to copper toxicity to gain a broader understanding of the basis of copper resistance.