Transcriptome profile of Drosophila adult LOF models for motor neuron degenerative disorders

This study addresses the impact of reduced expression of the drosophila orthologues of the human Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMN1) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (FUS and TARDBP) disease genes on the fly neuronal transcriptome. Adult-onset expression of short hairpin (sh) RNA was used to induce RNAi-mediated gene silencing of caz, Smn, TBPH or always early as a control. RNA was prepared from pooled fly heads five to seven days post induction of shRNA expression, quality checked and subjected to RNA-seq following validation of target gene knock-down levels by qPCR. Flies without adult-onset induction of respective shRNA expression served as control. The transcriptome from 3 independent replicates was profiled using Illumina paired-end mRNA-seq.