Last week in lab journal club we discussed a very nice paper by @mattpiperlab and @a_j_dobson available online on bioRxiv:

Lifespan extension by dietary restriction in Drosophila is associated with GATA motifs and organ-specific, TOR-dependent transcriptional networks.

Dietary restriction of amino acids and inhibition of TOR (by Rapamycin) are two robust ways to extend lifespan in flies. Here the authors do some very nice tissue mRNA expression analyses to examine how these two experimental manipulations may affect gene expression. Their data reveal some interesting tissue specific effects in transcription and also point to a role for GATA transcription factors in lifespan-associated transcriptional changes.

We liked this paper – it will open up lots of new work on GATA factors and nutrient/TOR signaling.  And we were especially happy to see it on bioRXiv for all to view. Some thoughts we had (mostly for future work): Does TOR signaling regulate the GATA transcription factors? Do these GATA factors regulate lifespan? Might they also be important for nutrient/TOR control of transcription and growth in larvae or do nutrients/TOR regulate two different transcriptional programs in larvae (growth) vs adult (fecundity and lifespan)?