Knockdown resistance to heat stress and slow recovery from chill coma are genetically associated in a quantitative trait locus region of chromosome 2 in Drosophila melanogaster.

In insects, two ecologically relevant traits of thermal adaptation are knockdown resistance to high temperature (KRHT) and chill-coma recovery (CCR). Chromosome 2 of Drosophila melanogaster was tested for quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting both CCR and KRHT in backcrosses between homosequential lines that are fixed for the standard (noninverted) sequence of this autosome. These lines were obtained by artificial selection on KRHT and subsequent inbreeding from a stock that was derived from a single wild population. Heat-induced expression of the 70KD heat-shock protein (Hsp70) was also examined for variation between the lines. Composite interval mapping was performed for each trait on each reciprocal backcross, identifying one QTL region in the middle of chromosome 2 for both KRHT and CCR. The largest estimates of additive effects were found in pericentromeric regions of chromosome 2, accounting for 10-14% (CCR) and 10-17% (KRHT) of the phenotypic variance in BC populations. No QTL was found in the region of the heat-shock factor (hsf) gene. However, the two parental lines have diverged in the heat-induced Hsp70 expression. Distribution of KRHT QTL on chromosome 2 was similar between this study based on crosses between lines selected from a single wild population and previous work based on crosses between selection lines from different continents. Colocalized QTL showed a trade-off association between CCR and KRHT, which should be the result of either multiple, tightly linked trait-specific genes or a single gene with pleiotropic effects on the traits. We discuss candidate loci contained within the QTL regions.