The role of microbial load during aging of the adult fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is incompletely understood. Here we show dramatic increases in aerobic and anaerobic bacterial load during aging, both inside the body and on the surface. Scanning electron microscopy and cell staining analyses of the surface of aged flies detected structures resembling abundant small bacteria and bacterial biofilms. Bacteria cultured from laboratory flies included aerobic species Acetobacter aceti, Acetobacter tropicalis, and Acetobacter pasteurianus and anaerobic species Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus sp. MR-2; Lactobacillus homohiochii, Lactobacillus fructivorans, and Lactobacillus brevis were identified by DNA sequencing. Reducing bacterial load and antimicrobial peptide gene expression by axenic culture or antibiotics had no effect on life span. We conclude that Drosophila can tolerate a significant bacterial load and mount a large innate immune response without a detectable trade-off with life span; furthermore, microbes do not seem to limit life span under optimized laboratory conditions.

Immune function declines with age in Drosophila and humans, and autophagy is implicated in immune function. In addition, autophagy genes are required for life span extension caused by reduced insulin/IGF1-like signaling and dietary restriction in C. elegans. To test if the autophagy pathway might be limiting for immunity and/or life span in adult Drosophila, the Geneswitch system was used to cause conditional inactivation of the autophagy genes Atg5, Atg7 and Atg12 by RNAi. Conditional inhibition of Atg genes in adult flies reduced lysotracker staining of adult tissues, and reduced resistance to injected E. coli, as evidenced by increased bacterial titers and reduced fly survival. However, survival of uninjected flies was unaffected by Atg gene inactivation. The data indicate that Atg gene activity is required for normal immune function in adult flies, and suggest that neither autophagy nor immune function are limiting for adult life span under typical laboratory conditions.

BackgroundThe plant-derived terpenoid, α-pinene is a bicyclic monoterpene potentially useful for the treatment of various diseases which also includes cancer and its types. The present investigation is about finding the anticancer activity of the α-pinene extracted from the leaves of Boswellia dalzielii over the PA-1 cancer cells of the human ovary.Material/MethodsThe cytotoxic activity of the α-pinene was evaluated using MTT and LDH assays which indicated that α-pinene could induce cytotoxicity in cancer-causing cells in the ovary. The consequences of α-pinene on the cell sequence regulation were determined by the staining technique using propidium iodide (PI) followed with flow cytometry.ResultsThe cell cycle distribution analysis showed that α-pinene inhibit the cycle progression from G2 to M phase. In addition, apoptosis analysis is done through the double staining investigation using Annexin V-FITC/PI to analyze the controlled growth of α-pinene which is associated with the apoptosis. Caspase-3 a crucial enzyme involved in apoptosis was markedly increased in the α-pinene treated PA-1 cells. The apoptosis results reveal, that the cancer cells at the human ovary with α-pinene induces the significant populations of apoptotic cells.ConclusionsOverall, α-pinene may exert anticancer effects in PA-1 cells by promoting cytotoxicity, suppression of cell sequence progression along with the programmed cell death.