LncRNA mediated regulation of aging pathways in Drosophila melanogaster during dietary restriction

Abstract

Dietary restriction (DR) extends lifespan in many species which is a well-known phenomenon. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in regulation of cell senescence and important age-related signaling pathways. Here, we profiled the lncRNA and mRNA transcriptome of fruit flies at 7 day and 42 day during DR and fully-fed conditions, respectively. In general, 102 differentially expressed lncRNAs and 1406 differentially expressed coding genes were identified. Most informatively we found a large number of differentially expressed lncRNAs and their targets enriched in GO and KEGG analysis. We discovered some new aging related signaling pathways during DR, such as hippo signaling pathway-fly, phototransduction-fly and protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum etc. Novel lncRNAs <i>XLOC_092363</i> and <i>XLOC_166557</i> are found to be located in 10 kb upstream sequences of <i>hairy</i> and <i>ems</i> promoters, respectively. Furthermore, tissue specificity of some novel lncRNAs had been analyzed at 7 day of DR in fly head, gut and fat body. Also the silencing of lncRNA <i>XLOC_076307</i> resulted in altered expression level of its targets including <i>Gadd45</i> (involved in FoxO signaling pathway). Together, the results implicated many lncRNAs closely associated with dietary restriction, which could provide a resource for lncRNA in aging and age-related disease field.