Genetic architecture of heart rate and its response to dietary salt mapped in Drosophila

Researchers including Gulnur Ipek Erdemli, Murat Yilmaz, and colleagues have published a PLOS Genetics study mapping the genetic architecture of basal heart rate and its response to dietary salt in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster.

Heart rate is a heritable quantitative trait influenced by both genetic variation and environmental exposures. Despite the identification of numerous genes associated with heart-rate variation in humans and other organisms, how those genes interact with environmental stressors — and with each other — remains incompletely characterised. Using Drosophila, which offers experimental tractability and a well-annotated genome, the team identified genetic loci associated with basal heart rate and with the degree to which heart rate changes in response to varying dietary salt levels.

The Drosophila cardiac system is structurally simpler than the mammalian heart, but conserved ion channel genes and signalling pathways make it a useful platform for dissecting the genetic basis of cardiac rhythm. The study contributes to a broader research effort to understand how polygenic variation interacts with diet to shape physiological traits — a question with relevance to the genetics of hypertension, arrhythmia, and cardiovascular disease in humans, though direct translational claims are not warranted from a fly model alone.