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

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 XLOC_ 092363 and XLOC_166557 are found to be located in 10 kb upstream sequences of hairy and ems 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 XLOC_ 076307 resulted in altered expression level of its targets including Gadd45 (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.