Maternal starvation primes progeny response to nutritional stress

PLoS Genet. 2021 Nov 29;17(11):e1009932. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009932. eCollection 2021 Nov.

Abstract

Organisms adapt to environmental changes in order to survive. Mothers exposed to nutritional stresses can induce an adaptive response in their offspring. However, the molecular mechanisms behind such inheritable links are not clear. Here we report that in Drosophila, starvation of mothers primes the progeny against subsequent nutritional stress. We found that RpL10Ab represses TOR pathway activity by genetically interacting with TOR pathway components TSC2 and Rheb. In addition, starved mothers produce offspring with lower levels of RpL10Ab in the germline, which results in higher TOR pathway activity, conferring greater resistance to starvation-induced oocyte loss. The RpL10Ab locus encodes for the RpL10Ab mRNA and a stable intronic sequence RNA (sisR-8), which collectively repress RpL10Ab pre-mRNA splicing in a negative feedback mechanism. During starvation, an increase in maternally deposited RpL10Ab and sisR-8 transcripts leads to the reduction of RpL10Ab expression in the offspring. Our study suggests that the maternally deposited RpL10Ab and sisR-8 transcripts trigger a negative feedback loop that mediates intergenerational adaptation to nutritional stress as a starvation response.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Drosophila melanogaster / genetics
  • Drosophila melanogaster / physiology
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental / genetics
  • Germ Cells / growth & development
  • Introns / genetics
  • Oocytes / growth & development
  • Oocytes / metabolism
  • Signal Transduction / genetics
  • Starvation / genetics*
  • Stress, Physiological / genetics*
  • Transcription Factors / genetics*

Substances

  • Transcription Factors

Grants and funding

JWP, SNC, AYEN are funded by the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.