Cindy Dupuis

Research interests

I am interested in the evolution of traits allowing organisms to tolerate harsh nutritional and environmental conditions, and to the potential trade-offs resulting from those adaptations. Indeed, evolving tolerance to extreme conditions can impact other traits important for survival, limiting the extent of adaptation.

 

In my thesis, I am focusing on adaptation to chronic juvenile malnutrition. I use experimentally evolved populations of Drosophila melanogaster to understand the consequences of larval adaptation on later adult metabolism.

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Larval adaptation to malnutrition has some detrimental effects on adult life, such as a reduced starvation resistance (unpublished results). We try to further characterize changes caused by larval adaptation in selected adults using metabolomics approach (untargeted and multiple pathway). We hope to discover which metabolic processes are affected in selected adults and to understand what underlies the trade-off with better larval performance on the poor food.

Follow us:  

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Office room: 2107
Phone: +4121 692 4223
Fax: +3121 692 4265
cindy.dupuis[@]unil.ch

Member of Kawecki group