Investigation of expression level of few target genes for epigenetic modification during central nervous system aging in Drosophila melanogaster

Central Nervous system provides body homeostasis and adaptation to environmental changes, thus deregulated nervous processes can accelerates aging. On the other hand, neurodegenerative disorders are age-dependent conditions. Since neurons are highly vulnerable to oxidative damage thus, the normal brain aging and neurodegenerative conditions share similar characteristics. Drosophila melanogaster is an excellent model organism to study brain aging and age-related neurodegenerative changes. It has been reported that human Tau over-expression in Drosophila brain leads to DNA oxidation and a wide spread chromatin relaxation leading to changes in expression level of specific target genes. In this study, in order to obtain a more accurate insight into the normal aging of the nervous system we quantified and compared expression levels of the same target genes in young flies (4 days old) and old flies (40 days old) of wild-type Oregon K Drosophila insects applying qRT-PCR technique. The results showed that a group of genes including Nvd, CG15115, Ir41a, CG15661 and Uif show decreased expression by getting aged, and CG40006, Dscam1, Ints3, and Gprk1 genes are up-regulated as the flies’ age is increased. The Snap25 gene expression did not change during aging. These results showed that as the age rises, the expression of the genes in the organisms of this living creature undergoes changes that are due to changes in the epigenetic patterns. But the observed changes are different than that of reported in tauopathy fly models. This pattern of changes in gene expression reflects reduction of metabolic and signaling activity and increased accumulation of damage in the cells, which ultimately leads to aging.