Reduced Neuronal Transcription of Escargot, the Drosophila Gene Encoding a Snail-Type Transcription Factor, Promotes Longevity

Abstract

In recent years, several genes involved in complex neuron specification networks have been shown to control life span. However, information on these genes is scattered, and studies to discover new neuronal genes and gene cascades contributing to life span control are needed, especially because of the recognized role of the nervous system in governing homeostasis, aging, and longevity. Previously, we demonstrated that several genes that encode RNA polymerase II transcription factors and that are involved in the development of the nervous system affect life span in Drosophila melanogaster. Among other genes, escargot (esg) was demonstrated to be causally associated with an increase in the life span of male flies. Here, we present new data on the role of esg in life span control. We show that esg affects the life spans of both mated and unmated males and females to varying degrees. By analyzing the survival and locomotion of the esg mutants, we demonstrate that esg is involved in the control of aging. We show that increased longevity is caused by decreased esg transcription. In particular, we demonstrate that esg knockdown in the nervous system increased life span, directly establishing the involvement of the neuronal esg function in life span control. Our data invite attention to the mechanisms regulating the esg transcription rate, which is changed by insertions of DNA fragments of different sizes downstream of the structural part of the gene, indicating the direction of further research. Our data agree with the previously made suggestion that alterations in gene expression during development might affect adult lifespan, due to epigenetic patterns inherited in cell lineages or predetermined during the development of the structural and functional properties of the nervous system.

Disordered Expression of shaggy, the Drosophila Gene Encoding a Serine-Threonine Protein Kinase GSK3, Affects the Lifespan in a Transcript-, Stage-, and Tissue-Specific Manner

“…Transcript levels were measured as described in [15,16]. Total RNA for real-time reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was extracted from batches of 30 whole bodies of 3- to 5-day-old males and females using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and DNase I (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) according to the manufacturers’ instructions.…”

“…First, GSK3 participates in the control of asymmetric neuroblast division. Earlier, we demonstrated that functional changes in several genes involved in the regulation of this developmental process, namely, aPKC encoding the GSK3 target, aPKC, escargot and inscutable , affect the lifespan of adult flies [14,15]. Moreover, our previous studies suggest that changes in gene expression at the embryonic stage can be responsible for an increase in adult lifespan due to yet unknown mechanisms that provide this carry-over effect [16].…”

Comparison of the Microsatellite Distribution Patterns in the Genomes of Euarchontoglires at the Taxonomic Level

“…The CDSs containing P-SSRs in the genomes of Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Oryctolagus cuniculus, Tupaia chinensis, and Galeopterus variegatus were mainly enriched in transcription factors ( Figure 6B). Transcription factors, which bind preferentially to certain DNA sequences, play the central role of transcriptional regulation in all organisms (Imlay, 2015;Symonenko et al, 2018;Mejhert et al, 2020). In this study, the transcription factors containing SSRs were further identified from the annotation files and the results in Supplementary Table 11 by a Python script.…”

A 24 h Age Difference Causes Twice as Much Gene Expression Divergence as 100 Generations of Adaptation to a Novel Environment

“…An early landmark study of gene expression in Drosophila indicated that adult flies differ dramatically in gene expression between sexes, but, within a given sex, gene expression is rather stable across different age classes [ 24 ]. As a consequence, many gene expression analyses in Drosophila combine flies differing in age by up to 15 days in a single sample, for example, [ 11 , 18 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Since several subsequent studies of senescence in Drosophila demonstrated considerable gene expression dynamics during aging [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ], we were interested in scrutinizing the differences in gene expression between flies differing in age by as little as 24 h.…”