Project description:To examine the Ten-Eleven Translocation (TET) proteins and their role in tumorigenesis in hemocytes and heads in Drosophila melanogaster. To identify the transcriptomic profile of wild type mTET2 versus mTET2 mutants (catalytic versus non-catalytic) to investigate TET2 role in normal central nervous system (CNS) function and innate immunity.
Project description:We sequenced mRNA extracted from heads of a D. melanogaster population that was sedated with a stream of ethanol saturated vapor, 30 minutes before RNA extraction; and from an age-matched untreated control group. Differential gene expression between the two groups was calculated and reported. Examination of mRNA levels in heads of D. melanogaster adult females after ethanol exposure was performed using next generation sequencing (NGS) technology.
Project description:<p>Chronic sleep loss profoundly impacts metabolic health and shortens lifespan, but studies of the mechanisms involved have focused largely on acute sleep deprivation. To identify metabolic consequences of chronically reduced sleep, we conducted unbiased metabolomics on heads of three adult Drosophila short-sleeping mutants with very different mechanisms of sleep loss: fumin (fmn), redeye (rye), and sleepless (sss). Common features included elevated ornithine and polyamines, with lipid, acyl-carnitine, and TCA cycle changes suggesting mitochondrial dysfunction. Studies of excretion demonstrate inefficient nitrogen elimination in adult sleep mutants, likely contributing to their polyamine accumulation. Increasing levels of polyamines, particularly putrescine, promote sleep in control flies but poison sleep mutants. This parallels the broadly enhanced toxicity of high dietary nitrogen load from protein in chronically sleep-restricted Drosophila, including both sleep mutants and flies with hyper-activated wake-promoting neurons. Together, our results implicate nitrogen stress as a novel mechanism linking chronic sleep loss to adverse health outcomes-and perhaps for linking food and sleep homeostasis at the cellular level in healthy organisms.</p>
Project description:In a forward genetic screen, we have previously identified a null mutant of Cdk12 that results in alterations in actin dynamics, the axon initial segment and electrophysiology in Drosophila melanogaster. To decipher how Cdk12 may be having these effects, we extracted RNA from pooled Drosophila heads and compared Cdk12-null mutants to controls at the transcriptome level.
Project description:We sequenced microRNA from heads of two D. melanogaster populations: an ethanol treated group (30 minutes after sedation with ethanol saturated vapor), and an age-matched untreated control group; and calculated differential microRNA expression between the two groups.
Project description:Species-specific regulation of gene expression contributes to the development and maintenance of reproductive isolation and to species differences in ecologically important traits. A better understanding of the evolutionary forces which shape regulatory variation and divergence can be developed by comparing expression differences among species and interspecific hybrids. Once expression differences are identified, the underlying genetics of regulatory variation or divergence can be explored. With the goal of associating cis and/or trans components of regulatory divergence with differences in gene expression, overall and allele-specific expression levels were assayed genome-wide in female adult heads of D. melanogaster, D. simulans and their F1 hybrids. A greater proportion of cis differences than trans differences were identified for genes expressed in heads and, in accordance with previous studies, cis differences also explained a larger number of species differences in overall expression level. Regulatory divergence was found to be prevalent among genes associated with defense, olfaction, and among genes downstream of the Drosophila sex determination hierarchy. In addition, two genes, with critical roles in sex determination and micro RNA processing, Sxl and loqs, were identified as misexpressed in hybrid female heads, potentially contributing to hybrid incompatibility.
