First transcriptome profiling of D. melanogaster after development in a deep underground low radiation background laboratory

Abstract

Natural background radiation is a permanent multicomponent factor. It has an influence on biological organisms, but effects of its deprivation still remain unclear. The aim of our work was to study for the first time responses of D. melanogaster to conditions of the Deep Underground Low-Background Laboratory DULB-4900 (BNO, INR, RAS, Russia) at the transcriptome level by RNA-seq profiling. Overall 77 transcripts demonstrated differential abundance between flies exposed to low and natural background radiation. Enriched biological process functional categories were established for all genes with differential expression. The results showed down-regulation of primary metabolic processes and up-regulation of both the immune system process and the response to stimuli. The comparative analysis of our data and publicly available transcriptome data on D. melanogaster exposed to low and high doses of ionizing radiation did not reveal common DEGs in them. We hypothesize that the observed changes in gene expression can be explained by the influence of the underground conditions in DULB-4900, in particular, by the lack of stimuli. Thus, our study challenges the validity of the LNT model for the region of background radiation doses below a certain level (~16.4 nGy h-1) and the presence of a dose threshold for D. melanogaster.

Urine metabolomics analysis of sleep quality in deep-underground miners: A pilot study

“…Previous studies have confirmed the changing patterns of various living organisms in this special deep-underground environments, including protozoa (Paramecium tetraurelia and Synechococcus lividus) (1,5), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (6), mammalian cells (V79, FD-LSC-1) (4, 7), and Drosophila melanogaster (8,9). Planel, Kawanishi, and Castillo described that cell proliferation was slowed down (5,10,11).…”

“…In recent years, the study of the biological impact of deepunderground laboratories has received increasing attention from international research teams (9,25,(36)(37)(38)(39). This study attempts to reveal the potential effects related to sleep quality a DUvsG refers to the group "Deep-underground vs. ground, " GSQvsPSQ refers to the group "Good sleep quality vs. poor sleep quality".…”

Reduced Environmental Dose Rates Are Responsible for the Increased Susceptibility to Radiation-Induced DNA Damage in Larval Neuroblasts of Drosophila Grown inside the LNGS Underground Laboratory

“…In principle, the observed difference could also be linked to some other factors difficult to control (i.e., differences in air quality, vibrations related to nearby installations, the presence of sunlight at RRE and not at LRE, etc.) as proposed by Zarubin et al [ 7 ]. We used incubators to avoid at least some of the proposed confounding factors and tried to get more insight on the involvement of the environmental radiation on the modulation of the radiation-induced DNA damage, directly investigating the role of specific components of the environmental radiation field on the response of Drosophila larval neuroblasts [ 12 ].…”

“…Being among the most efficient places for experimental isolation from radiation, some DULs have become multidisciplinary sites hosting important studies in fields such as geology, geophysics, the climate, environmental, and space sciences, technology/instrumentation development, and radiobiology. So far, all biological studies carried out in DULs strongly indicate that the deprivation of natural background radiation affects, although to varied degrees, the growth and transcription profiles of bacteria as well as of unicellular and multicellular eukaryotes [ 1 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Moreover, several experiments indicate that cell cultures kept in this strongly reduced background show higher susceptibility to subsequent radiation-induced DNA damage than parallel cultures kept in external radiation background [ 8 , 9 , 10 ].…”

Radiation dose rate effects: what is new and what is needed?

“…Alterations in several genes related to ribosomal proteins, membrane transport, respiration, and antioxidant regulation for increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) removal were also observed in experiments carried out inside DUL on mammalian cell cultures and organisms (Smith et al 1994 ; Fratini et al 2015 ; Van Voorhies et al 2020 ; Liu et al 2020b ; Zarubin et al 2021 ; Castillo et al 2015 ). In a recent paper, Fischietti et al ( 2020 ) reported that pKZ1 A11 mouse hybridoma cells growing underground at the LNGS display a qualitatively different response to stress; induced by over-growth with respect to the external reference laboratory.…”