Flies who cannot take the heat: Genome-wide gene expression analysis of temperature-sensitive lethality in an inbred line of Drosophila melanogaster

Fitness decreases associated with inbreeding depression often become more pronounced in a stressful environment. The functional genomic causes of these inbreeding-by-environment (IxE) interactions, and of inbreeding depression in general, are poorly known. To further our understanding of IxE interactions, we performed a genome-wide gene expression study of a single inbred line that suffers from temperature-sensitive lethality. We confirmed that increased differential expression between the thermosensitive line and the control line occurs at the restrictive temperature. This demonstrates that IxE interactions in survival are reflected in similar IxE interactions at the gene expression level. To make an impression of the cellular response associated with the lethal effect, we analysed all functional annotation terms that were overrepresented among the differentially expressed genes. Some sets of differentially expressed genes function in the general stress response, and these are more likely to also be differentially expressed in other studies of inbreeding, inbreeding depression, immunity and heat stress. Other sets of differentially expressed genes are shared with studies of gene expression in inbred lines, but not studies of the response to extrinsic stress, and represent a general transcriptomic signature of inbreeding. Finally, some sets of genes have an annotation that is not reported in other studies. These we consider to be candidates for the genes harbouring the mutations responsible for the thermosensitive phenotype, as these mutations are expected to be unique to this line. These genes may also serve as candidate QTL in studies of thermal tolerance and heat resistance