RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The Y chromosome contributes to sex-specific aging in Drosophila
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 156042
DO 10.1101/156042
A1 Emily J. Brown
A1 Doris Bachtrog
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/26/156042.abstract
AB Heterochromatin suppresses repetitive DNA, and a loss of heterochromatin has been observed in aged cells of several species, including humans and Drosophila [1-3]. Males often contain substantially more heterochromatic DNA than females, due to the presence of a large, repeat-rich Y chromosome, and male flies generally have shorter average life spans than females [4,5]. Here we show that repetitive DNA becomes de-repressed more rapidly in old male flies relative to females, and repeats on the Y chromosome are disproportionally mis-expressed during aging. This is associated with a loss of heterochromatin at repetitive elements during aging in male flies, and a general loss of repressive chromatin in aged males away from pericentromeric regions and the Y. By generating flies with different sex chromosome karyotypes (XXY females; X0 and XYY males), we show that repeat de-repression and average lifespan is directly correlated with the number of Y chromosomes. Thus, sex-specific chromatin differences contribute to sex-specific aging in flies.