Gene expression profiling on heads of Drosophila chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 1 (CHD1) deletion mutants

CHD1 is a conserved ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling factor with roles in transcriptional regulation and chromatin assembly. Here we show that deletion of Chd1 causes multiple behavioral and metabolic defects. In particular, it diminishes food-intake and results in shortened lifespan of mutant flies. These phenotypes can be rescued by brain-specific expression of Chd1 via the elav promoter. Consistently, neuron-specific expression of Chd1 rescues the wide-spread transcriptional dysregulation observed in the absence of CHD1. RNA was prepared from heads of 10 day-old Drosophila females for RNA-seq analysis. Three genoytypes were used (Chd1-deficient, Chd1-rescued, elavGal4>UAS-Chd1)