Phytochemical Intervention Elicits Sex-Specific Responses in the Gut Microbiome and Transcriptome of Drosophila

However, the structural distinctiveness of phytochemicals and their modulation of host intestinal gene expression in a sex-dependent manner remain poorly understood. In this study, we used Drosophila melanogaster to investigate gut transcriptomic responses to four phytochemical-enriched diets, capsaicin, curcumin, resveratrol, and thymoquinone.

Two-day-old mated female and male flies were exposed to control or phytochemical-supplemented diets for 10 days, after which gut tissues were dissected for bulk RNA sequencing. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that biological sex was a major source of variation in the gut, with female and male flies showing distinct expression profiles across dietary treatments. Phytochemical supplementation induced compound and sex-specific transcriptional responses.