Authors:

Ashley Xu

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About Paper:

Sex differences in aging can be seen notably in the human lifespan, and sex-specific prevalences also exist in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. While the mechanism behind sex-specific aging is not fully understood, dosage compensation is an important process for equalizing X chromosome expression between sexes. Like humans, fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) use an XY sex-determination where females are XX and males are XY. In humans, dosage compensation occurs through inactivation of one X chromosome in females. In fruit flies, dosage compensation occurs through two-fold upregulation of X chromosome transcription in males. This involves histone acetylation by the Male-Specific Lethal (MSL) complex, which is repressed in females. The aim of my project is to understand how the X chromosome is regulated between sexes during aging, while looking at factors such as cell type and disease state. My project involved computational analysis of two datasets generated by the Hongjie Li Lab at Baylor, the Aging Fly Cell Atlas (AFCA) and the Alzheimer's Disease Fly Cell Atlas (AD-FCA), with a focus on single nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) data from the fly head. The analysis utilized X:A expression ratio, which measures average expression of X chromosome genes relative to average expression of autosomal genes, to gain insight into X chromosome regulation and dosage compensation. 34 Athena DeGennaro:

Source:

Brown / Integration Initiative: Sex, Aging, Genomics, and Evolution (IISAGE) Research Experience for Undergraduates

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Co-authors:

Ashley Xu