Project description:Dietary restriction is a nutritional intervention that consistently increases life span in animals. To identify alternative, more acceptable nutritional regimes that nevertheless extend life span, we used the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model. We tested if weekly recurring nutritional regimes composed of phases of ad libitum feeding and dietary restriction can increase life span. Short periods of dietary restriction (up to 2 days) followed by longer ad libitum phases increased life span only marginally, whereas regimes comprising longer contiguous periods (3 days and more) became clearly positive, reaching similar life span extensions as those seen if dietary restriction was applied persistently. Female flies were substantially more responsive to these interventions than males. The finding that a minimal period of 3-4 days of dietary restriction is required to induce robust life span extensions was mirrored by the observation that substantial physiological and transcriptional changes occurred in a similar temporal pattern. Moreover, these dietary restriction induced changes were also detectable after switching to ad libitum feeding. Among the physiological changes induced by these phases of dietary restriction, a reduced metabolic rate and a substantial and long-lasting reduction in insulin signaling were most compelling. Age associated molecular signatures comprising mechanisms that reduce insulin signaling showed up after longer periods of dietary restriction in the fly’s fat body, thus showing how molecular alterations transduce into life span related physiological changes.
Project description:To identify molecular pathological alterations in AD brains, we performed interspecies comparative microarray analyses using RNAs prepared from postmortem human brain tissues donated for the Hisayama study and hippocampal RNAs from the triple-transgenic mouse model of AD (3xTg-AD) Three-way ANOVA of microarray data from frontal cortex, temporal cortex and hippocampus with presence/absence of AD and vascular dementia, and sex, as factors revealed that the gene expression profile is most significantly altered in the hippocampi of AD brains. Comparative analyses of the brains of AD patients and a mouse model of AD showed that genes involved in non-insulin dependent DM and obesity were significantly altered in both, as were genes related to psychiatric disorders and AlzheimerM-bM-^@M-^Ys disease. 3xTg-AD-H mice harboring a homozygous Psen1M146V mutation and homozygous mutant transgenes for APPSwe and tauP301L, 3xTg-AD-h mice harboring hemizygous APPSwe and tauP301L transgenes with a homozygous Psen1M146V mutation, and non-transgenic control mice (non-Tg) were used in this study, (male, n=3 for each group). RNA samples prepared from hippocampi were subjected to microarray analysis using the Affymetrix Mouse Gene 1.0 ST platform (GPL6246).
Project description:Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects an estimated 5.8 million Americans, and advanced age is the greatest risk factor. AD patients have altered intestinal microbiota. Accordingly, depleting intestinal microbiota in AD animal models reduces amyloid-beta (A?) plaque deposition. Age-related changes in the microbiota contribute to immunologic and physiologic decline. Translationally relevant dietary manipulations may be an effective approach to slow microbiota changes during aging. We previously showed that calorie restriction (CR) reduced brain A? deposition in the well-established Tg2576 mouse model of AD. Presently, we investigated whether CR alters the microbiome during aging. We found that female Tg2576 mice have more substantial age-related microbiome changes compared to wildtype (WT) mice, including an increase in Bacteroides, which were normalized by CR. Specific gut microbiota changes were linked to A? levels, with greater effects in females than in males. In the gut, Tg2576 female mice had an enhanced intestinal inflammatory transcriptional profile, which was reversed by CR. Furthermore, we demonstrate that Bacteroides colonization exacerbates A? deposition, which may be a mechanism whereby the gut impacts AD pathogenesis. These results suggest that long-term CR may alter the gut environment and prevent the expansion of microbes that contribute to age-related cognitive decline.
Project description:Analysis of the transcriptome in the epididymal fat of young mice (8 months of age) from treatment of dietary restriction, or rapamycin Total RNA extracted from epididymal fat of 8 month old C57BL6/J mice started on ad libitum (AL) , 40% dietary restriction (DR), or 14 ppm rapamycin (Rapa) from 2 months of age on 6 months of treatment. Number of samples total: 24, with 8 samples in AL, 8 samples in DR, and 8 samples in Rapa
Project description:To identify molecular pathological alterations in AD brains, we performed interspecies comparative microarray analyses using RNAs prepared from postmortem human brain tissues donated for the Hisayama study and hippocampal RNAs from the triple-transgenic mouse model of AD (3xTg-AD) Three-way ANOVA of microarray data from frontal cortex, temporal cortex and hippocampus with presence/absence of AD and vascular dementia, and sex, as factors revealed that the gene expression profile is most significantly altered in the hippocampi of AD brains. Comparative analyses of the brains of AD patients and a mouse model of AD showed that genes involved in non-insulin dependent DM and obesity were significantly altered in both, as were genes related to psychiatric disorders and Alzheimer’s disease.
Project description:Intestinal cancers are highly responsive to their nutrient environment. However, previous studies integrating nutrition into the network of cancer progression are largely inconsistent. We therefore investigated the effects of dietary restriction, which is the most consistently found beneficial nutritional intervention, on the development of intestinal stem cell tumors in a Drosophila melanogaster model. Submission to dietary restriction led to a decline in tumor mass and a morphological as well as functional rehabilitation of the intestine. Nevertheless, flies submitted to dietary restriction exhibited a drastically reduced lifespan due to substantial loss of body mass. To circumvent these destructive consequences, we applied a nutritional regimen consisting of alternating phases of dietary restriction and a fully nutritious diet. Strikingly, the recurrent diet reduced tumor mass and reinstated gut functionality to the same extend as continuous dietary restriction, while restoring the lifespan of tumor-bearing flies back to the level of healthy controls.
Project description:To demonstrate the utility of the newly developed dendron-coated phosphokinase antibody array(DPA) in which the antibodies are immobilized on a dendron-coated glass slide, the phosphorylation profiles of brain tissue samples obtained from Alzheimer's disease (AD) model mice were generated. The phosphorylation profiles were generated from four conditions of mice brain tissues; normal at the age of 2month, AD at the age of 2month, normal at the age of 6month and AD at the age of 6month. For each conditions, the profiling was done with three biological replicates (n=3).