THE NUMBER OF SUPINE EVENTS CORRELATES WITH LONGEVITY IN Ceratitis capitata

BOCHICCHIO PA; RABOSSI A; QUESADA-ALLUÉ LA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; 51 Annual Meeting Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular (SAIB)

When adults of C. capitata fall, they might remain in a "supine" position (inverted on its back). The late recovery of supination (>2 seconds), apparently due to neuro-motor decoupling, was proposed as a possible indicator of early death. An experimental system was built to simultaneously record this and other behaviors. Early supine events were recorded between 5 and 10 days of age. Our hypothesis was that the number of ?supine? events correlates with the underlying physiological state, thus eventually correlating with death. We demonstrated that under our experimental conditions, the number of supinations, which seems to be an indicator of impairment, was associated with early death, but not with the delay of the recovery. Several genes associated to ataxias in Drosophila were studied in medflies dissected brains: tefu (homologous to human ATM), turtle(homologous to vertebrate neogenin genes), and parkin. The expression was quantified by real time PCR. tefu mRNA showed an increase in ?supine? groups, while the expression of MnSOD was significantly reduced. Our result suggests that supine flies may present an oxidative damage in brain. Surprisingly, the expression of turtle was strongly increased in ?supine? flies, opposite to the observation in Drosophila turtle ataxic flies.