New fruit fly model of human ageing

Research lead

Researchers at the Oxford University and the Open University in the UK claim to have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human ageing. Lynne Cox and Robert Saunders have discovered a gene in Drosophila that will enable them to be used to study the effects ageing has on DNA. 

Cox said, “We study the premature human ageing disease, Werner syndrome to help understand normal ageing. The key to this disease is that changes in a single gene, WRN, mean that patients age very quickly.”

While progress has been made in understanding what the gene does in vitro until now it has not been possible to investigate the gene to look at its effect on development in a complete organism. “Working on this gene in fruit flies, we can now model human ageing in a powerful experimental system,” said Cox.

Saunders added, “This work shows for the first time that we can use the short-lived fruit fly to investigate the function of an important human ageing gene.  We have opened up the possibility of using this model system to analyse the way that such genes work in a whole organism, not just in single cells.”

Fruit flies with damage to the WRN gene share important features with people suffering from Werner syndrome, who also have damage to the WRN gene. In particular, DNA is unstable in the flies that have the damaged version of the gene, and the chromosomes are often altered. 

The researchers have shown that the fly’s DNA becomes rearranged, with genes being swapped between chromosomes. In patients with Werner syndrome, this genome instability leads to cancer.

The research was funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.