Project description:It is becoming increasingly evident that the myriad of microbes in the gut, within cells and attached to body parts (or roots of plants), play crucial roles for the host. Although this has been known for decades, recent developments in molecular biology allow for expanded insight into the abundance and function of these microbes. Here we used the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to investigate fitness measures across the lifetime of flies fed a suspension of gut microbes harvested from young or old flies, respectively. Our hypothesis was that flies constitutively enriched with a 'Young microbiome' would live longer and be more agile at old age (i.e. have increased healthspan) compared to flies enriched with an 'Old microbiome'. Three major take home messages came out of our study: (1) the gut microbiomes of young and old flies differ markedly; (2) feeding flies with Young and Old microbiomes altered the microbiome of recipient flies and (3) the two different microbial diets did not have any effect on locomotor activity nor lifespan of the recipient flies, contradicting our working hypothesis. Combined, these results provide novel insight into the interplay between hosts and their microbiomes and clearly highlight that the phenotypic effects of gut transplants and probiotics can be complex and unpredictable.
Project description:Background Insulin signaling pathway is conserved from worms to humans. In Drosophila, three insulin-like peptides (dilps) are expressed in the insulin producing cells (IPCs) in the brain. In order to identify target genes of insulin signaling, the IPCs of female flies were destroyed during development by expressing apoptosis inducing factors reaper and head involution defective under control of the promoter region of dilp3. These insulin-deficient flies were analysed using high density microarrays. Results From the genes that appeared to be regulated in the absence of IPCs, the strongest difference was found for a gene involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Sequence analysis revealed that it is an alpha-glucosidase, which is able to break down disaccharides and/or glycogen. Conclusions We could identify an alpha-glucosidase, involved in carbohydrate metabolism, to be strongly affected in the context of decreased insulin signaling. The striking feature of this regulation was not only that it was the highest regulated, but it was the only gene regulated to this degree. Nutrient Conditions and Fly handling Experimental and control female flies were collected after hatching, then kept on fly maintenance food and separated from males after 11 days. After one day of recovery from carbon dioxide treatment, females were put in cages with PBS agar plates and supplied with yeast paste as only food source for 48 hours. Flies were shock frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at - 80°C for further handling. Keywords: IPC knockout, 14 day old female flies, 48h yeast feeding
Project description:Background Insulin signaling pathway is conserved from worms to humans. In Drosophila, three insulin-like peptides (dilps) are expressed in the insulin producing cells (IPCs) in the brain. In order to identify target genes of insulin signaling, the IPCs of female flies were destroyed during development by expressing apoptosis inducing factors reaper and head involution defective under control of the promoter region of dilp3. These insulin-deficient flies were analysed using high density microarrays. Results From the genes that appeared to be regulated in the absence of IPCs, the strongest difference was found for a gene involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Sequence analysis revealed that it is an alpha-glucosidase, which is able to break down disaccharides and/or glycogen. Conclusions We could identify an alpha-glucosidase, involved in carbohydrate metabolism, to be strongly affected in the context of decreased insulin signaling. The striking feature of this regulation was not only that it was the highest regulated, but it was the only gene regulated to this degree. Nutrient Conditions and Fly handling Experimental and control female flies were collected after hatching, then kept on fly maintenance food and separated from males after 11 days. After one day of recovery from carbon dioxide treatment, females were put in cages with PBS agar plates and supplied with yeast paste as only food source for 48 hours. Flies were shock frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at - 80°C for further handling. Keywords: IPC knockout, 14 day old female flies, 48h yeast feeding Insulin producing cell deficient flies were compared to control flies. Two independent biological repeats were performed. From the two repeats, 5 chips were hybridised, including dye swap Experimental and control female flies were collected after hatching, then kept on fly maintenance food and separated from males after 11 days. After one day of recovery from carbon dioxide treatment, females were put in cages with PBS agar plates and supplied with yeast paste as only food source for 48 hours. The microarray was scanned 3 times: low scan (suffix _L in data table) with a low amplification / intensity to avoid saturated spots for proper data analysis, high scan (suffix _H in data table) with a high amplification / intensity to detect also weak fluorescent spots which are missed in the low scan and medium scan which lies between high and low intensity and gives additional data points for subsequent calculations. Both copies and all hybridisation repeats were used for normalisation, VALUE therefore has the same value for these copies in all relevant hybridisations. For additional information see publication and web link. Keywords = insulin, aging, longevity, nutrient dependance Lot batch = FP7
Project description:The goal of this study is to compare changes in gene expression between young (5 days old) and old (45 days old) flies posterior midguts.
Project description:The aim of this study was to use unbiased transcriptomic analysis to characterize new traits that may explain differences in longevity between short- and long-lived wild-type backgrounds of Drosophila melanogaster – Dahomey and Oregon R, respectively. For the experiment we chose young flies (10 days old) to capture the difference in basal gene expression related to the genotype rather than to age-dependent functional decline. As a source for RNA extraction we used heads and thoraxes (combined) as tissues the most sensitive to aging. The expression of 3939 genes was changed (nearly 26% of the transcriptome, p-value < 0.05), with 1970 being upregulated and 1969 genes being downregulated in the Dahomey background compared to Oregon R. We found that young short-lived Dahomey flies have the traits previously associated with shorten lifespan such as increased lipo-oxidative stress, increased Tor signaling and loss of proteostasis and mitochondrial complex I activity. We hypothesized that all these characteristics are caused by an increase in octopamine signaling that promotes foraging behavior even under laboratory conditions where nutrients are in excess. Our results highlight the importance of controlling the genetic background in aging studies as well as interrogating several different pathways before making conclusions about what causes differences in longevity between different groups or individuals.
Project description:The integration of circadian and metabolic signals is essential for maintaining robust circadian rhythms and ensuring efficient metabolism and energy use. Using Drosophila as an animal model, we showed observed strong correlation between daily daily rhythms of protein O-linked N-acetylglucosaminylation (O-GlcNAcylation) and clock-controlled feeding-fasting cycles, suggesting that O-GlcNAcylation rhythms are primarily driven by nutrient input. Interestingly, daily O-GlcNAcylation rhythms were severely dampened when we subjected flies to time-restricted feeding (TRF) at unnatural feeding time. This suggests the presence of a clock-regulated buffering mechanism that prevents excessive O-GlcNAcylation at non-optimal times of the day-night cycle, which could disrupt circadian health. We performed targeted metabolomic analysis on hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP), which produces UDP-GlcNAc (the substrate for O-GlcNAcylation), to evaluate the daily activity of HBP enzymes under TRF conditions. We found glutamine--fructose-6-phosphate amidotransferase (GFAT) mediates this buffering mechanism.
Project description:The sensation of hunger after a period of fasting and the sensation of satiety after eating is crucial to behavioral regulation of food intake, but the biological mechanisms regulating these sensations are incompletely understood. We studied the behavioral and physiological adaptation to fasting in the vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster). Here we show that flies demonstrated increased behavioral attraction to food odor when food-deprived with no corresponding increase in sensitivity in the peripheral olfactory system. Flies increased their food intake transiently in the post-fasted state, but returned to a stable baseline feeding level within 24 hr after return to food. This modulation in feeding was accompanied by a significant increase in the size of the crop organ of the digestive system, suggesting that fasted flies responded both by increasing their food intake and storing reserve food in their crop. The post-fasting feeding response was observed in both male and female flies of diverse genetic backgrounds. Expression profiling of head, body, and chemosensory tissues by microarray analysis revealed several hundred genes that are regulated by feeding state, including 247 genes in the fly head. We performed RNA interference-mediated knockdown of, takeout, one of the genes strongly downregulated by fasting in multiple tissues. When takeout was knocked down in all neurons the post-fasting feeding response was abolished. These observations suggest that a coordinated transcriptional response to internal physiological state may regulate both ingestive behaviors and chemosensory perception of food 6 Pool of flies were used for this experiment. For each pool, samples were taken at 0,24 and 48h and separated in each body part. 56 samples were used for the analysis.