Expression data from young and aged Drosophila heads

We used microarrays to detail the global gene expression changes during aging in fly heads and identified genes related to the unfolded protein response are up-regulated upon aging. Drosophila heads were collected at young (2 days old) or aged (25 days old) stage for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We sought to obtain homogeneous populations of flies at each stage in order to increase the temporal resolution of expression profiles. To that end, we carefully raised, collected and aged flies under well-controlled conditions.