Publication: Rapamycin-mito-nuclear interactions

Rapamycin’s lifespan effect is modulated by mito-nuclear epistasis in Drosophila.

Big congratulations to Rita for her publication in Aging Cell!

To counter ill health in ageing we need to maximise efficacy of interventions, and minimise undesirable trade-offs. Such personalisation is challenging in all contexts, but especially so in ageing, when impacts of interventions occur on long timescales. We need to understand the detail of how and why individuals differ to pick the right intervention for the right individual.

When thinking about genetic variation, variation on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is often overlooked while we focus on DNA in the nucleus (nDNA). But mtDNA can have important effects, and also shape how effects of nDNA variation manifest - this is called mito-nuclear variation.

We asked if and how mito-nuclear variation shapes response to rapamycin, a gold-standard anti-ageing drug. In flies we found that lifespan effects differed significantly by the combination of mtDNA and nDNA, which is associated to differences in underlying mortality. We also assess how biological costs of the drug to egg laying covary.

Read the full story here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.14328