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Mechanism of Metabolic Suppression in Hypoxia‐Selected Drosophila melanogaster
Author(s) -
Zhou Dan,
Xue Jin,
Haddad Gabriel G
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.6.a923-c
Subject(s) - biology , drosophila melanogaster , gene , transcription factor , metabolic pathway , microbiology and biotechnology , regulator , glycolysis , genetics , gene expression , transcriptional regulation , phenotype , regulation of gene expression , transcription (linguistics) , transcriptome , citric acid cycle , metabolism , biochemistry , linguistics , philosophy
Metabolic depression is a common response and an important survival strategy in many animal species when exposed to an hypoxic environment. Although a number of biological mechanisms have been proposed to regulate the transition to a hypometabolic state in hypoxia, the molecular bases that mediate the suppression of metabolism are still largely unknown. Currently, we have generated a Drosophila melanogaster strain that survives extremely low O 2 , a lethal level for normal fruitflies. In order to identify the molecular bases of metabolic suppression and their role in hypoxic adaptation, expression microarrays were used to determine the changes in gene expression between selected and control flies. At the larval stage, a significantly synchronized down‐regulation of genes encoding proteins of several metabolic pathways including, e.g., glycolysis, TCA cycle, lipid and protein metabolism were identified. In order to investigate the regulatory mechanisms that control the coordinated expressional changes on functionally related genes, e.g, genes encoding enzymes of TCA cycle, a de novo analysis of the cis ‐regulatory regions of the coordinately regulated genes was performed. Several transcription regulator binding elements were found to be significantly enriched in these sequences. The biological role of these transcription regulators in the induction of the hypometabolic state is being evaluated.