# Coordinating nutrition and energy allocation: mechanisms and evolution

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA · 2020 · $317,564

## Abstract

Project Summary
All organisms share the common requirement of acquiring resources from the environment to build and
maintain anatomical structures and to fuel biological functions. How organisms allocate their limited resources
towards reproduction, somatic maintenance, and storage, underlies a vast array of phenotypes critical to
human health. Viewed within an energy allocation context, obesity and metabolic syndrome result from a
maladaptive over-allocation of resources to storage, aging is a necessary consequence of decreased
allocation to somatic maintenance, and “athletic” amenorrhea involves an allocational shift away from
reproduction. This proposal describes an experimental evolution approach using the well-characterized model
system, Drosophila melanogaster, to understand the genetic basis and evolution of the coordination between
allocation and resource availability. A fully genetically characterized population will be exposed to three
environments, each of which is predicted to select for a different resource allocation pattern. The proposed
experiments will determine the genomic, physiological, and high-level phenotypic changes that occur during
the evolution of a trait of fundamental importance to many of the most critical health concerns for modern
human populations (e.g., obesity, metabolic syndrome, and age-related diseases). The major objectives of the
research include 1) directly observing how resource allocation patterns towards reproduction, maintenance
(survival), and storage evolve during the course of adaptation different resource availability regimes, 2)
tracking genomic level changes to identify genes affecting the coordination of resource availability with
resource allocation, 3) characterizing intermediate phenotypic changes across the genotype to phenotype map,
and 4) documenting the degree of parallel evolution at different levels of the genotype to phenotype map.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9998964
- **Project number:** 5R01GM117135-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Elizabeth Griep King
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $317,564
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-01 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9998964

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9998964, Coordinating nutrition and energy allocation: mechanisms and evolution (5R01GM117135-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9998964. Licensed CC0.

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