High KCl Diet and Brain Function

Cheng Ji-Shan (鄭季姗)1, Kao Chih-Fei (高智飛)1

1 Department of Biological Science and Technology, NYCU, Taiwan

The daily sodium intake of most people in modern times is too high, and excessive salt consumption increases the risks of hypertension and various cardiovascular diseases in humans. So some people substitute low-sodium salt for salt. Potassium chloride is the most commonly used salt substitute. However, excessive consumption of potassium chloride can also cause other diseases, such as Hyperkalemia. In this project, we used the Drosophila model to elucidate the high potassium chloride diet (HKD)-induced impacts on brain physiology and changes of behaviors. We first chose to define the concentration of KCl that can be used as HKD in the Drosophila model. We define the HKD as the concentration of KCl added in the normal food that, when feeding to adult flies, causes 50% of reduction of normal median lifespan. The simple definition of HKD will allow us to study the following questions. (1) Does HKD treatment affect development in fruit flies? (2) Does HKD treatments lead to neurodegeneration and cognitive disorders? (3) What are the biological effects of high potassium nitrate (KNO3) and potassium lactate (C3H5KO3) intake to the fruit flies? Do they induce similar phenotypes in the  brain physiology and behaviors as the high KCl intake?