Transcriptome profiling of wild type and DNMT3L-overexpressing Drosophila larvae brains

The objective of the study was to examine the gene expression changes caused by human DNMT3L overexpression in Drosophila melanogaster brains. There were 6 samples in total- C1, C2, C3, D1, D2, and D3. C1-C3 were larvae brains from the strain of elavC155-Gal4, which were used as the control group (C). D1-D3 were larvae brains from the strain with DNMT3L overexpression, which were bred by crossing the strains of elavC155-Gal4 and w/w;P(UAS-DNMT3L,w+)/Cyo;TM2/TM6B and used as the DNMT3L overexpressing group (D). The total RNA of each sample was extracted from 30 brains of the 3rd instar larvae of Drosophila by using TRIzol reagent. Then the RNA samples were processed for high throughput transcriptome sequencing on Illumina HiSeq 3000 platform. Results: among 17737 cleaned RNAs, 267 RNAs were differentially expressed in DNMT3L overexpressing group compared with control group, with q-value = 0.05 and |fold change|=2 , with more down-regulation (151) than up-regulation (116). They corresponded to 655 human homologous genes. The differential expressed genes distributed in all chromosomes. Functional annotation with GO and KEGG enrichment revealed the top functional groups including calcium ion transport, voltage gated channel, choilnergic synapse, serotonergic synapse, and drug metabolism. Overall design: Transcriptome profiling of 3 control (elavC155-Gal4) and 3 experimental (DNMT3L overexpression, elavC155-Gal4 X w/w;P(UAS-DNMT3L,w+)/Cyo;TM2/TM6B ) 3rd instar larvae brain samples.