Cytochrome P450 Protein Family 4 Conservation and Diversification Among Flies

Commercial fruit pests, such as flies within the Tephritidae family, have a large economic impact on the global food supply due to their ability to infest a wide range of host plants. The genus Rhagoletis, which contains the apple maggot fly, has become an important organism for understanding the process of switching and adapting to new hosts. The enzyme group responsible for this ability in Rhagoletis flies is the Cytochrome P450 proteins. This superfamily of proteins is also known to help organisms deal with various environmental stressors, such as detoxification of plant defensive compounds or insecticides. The Rhagoletis zephyria (the snowberry maggot) genome has recently be sequenced, providing a complete list of Cytochrome P450 gene sequences. Using MegaX and sequences from National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree was generated to show potential conservation and diversification events of Cytochrome P450 genes in the diverse subfamily 4 in Rhagoletis, compared to other families Tephritidae and Drosophilidae, using mosquitos as an out-group. I hypothesize that Rhagoletis and other tephritids, as species that infest this live well-defended fruit, will have a greater Cytochrome P450 diversity than Drosophila species surviving on yeasts in decaying fruit