Gene expression changes in response to aging compared to heat stress, oxidative stress and ionizing radiation in Drosophila melanogaster

Gene expression changes in response to aging, hyperoxia, hydrogen peroxide, ionizing radiation, and heat stress were compared using microarrays. While aging shared features with each stress, aging was more similar to the stresses most associated with oxidative stress (hydrogen peroxide, hyperoxia, ionizing radiation) than to heat stress. Aging is associated with down-regulation of numerous mitochondrial genes, including electron-transport-chain (ETC) genes and mitochondrial metabolism genes, and a sub-set of these changes was also observed upon hydrogen peroxide stress and ionizing radiation stress. Aging shared the largest number of gene expression changes with hyperoxia. The extensive down-regulation of mitochondrial and ETC genes during aging is consistent with an aging-associated failure in mitochondrial maintenance, which may underlie the oxidative stress-like and proteotoxic stress-like responses observed during aging.

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Landis G, Shen J, Tower J