Aging in the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (fruit fly)

Aging is an inevitable biological process that could lead to physiological senescence and diseases. The underlying mechanisms are still being elucidated. Drosophila is an excellent model for aging studies with many distinct advantages. Here, we obtained the transcriptomic data of 200 sequenced Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) inbred lines at 3-week old and combined them with those from 3-5 day old flies from the same DGRP lines (Everett et al., 2020). We aim toevaluate the age effect on gene expression and uncover the genetic mechanisms of aging by performing a series of analyses, including quantitative genetics, genotype by age interaction, expression QTL mapping, mediation analysis, and network construction. This study would provide new insight into the aging process and pave the road for future functional analyses.