Questioning the Reproducibility of Fly Life Span Studies

In the course of examining gender differences on fly longevity, researchers here find sizable variations in life span between repeated studies. This variation is thought to derive from differences in maintaining a fly population, such as the dietary composition and season of the year. They suggest that this calls into question the detailed data obtained from much of the work involving aging and age-slowing interventions in flies. Reproducibility is critical to establishing whether or not observed effects are real. Flies may thus be a poor choice of model organism for any initial investigation of means to slow or reverse aging. While our original goal was to understand how genetic variation played a role in costs of reproduction, we discovered strong cohort effects from one study to the next, especially across years. While we did not interrogate environmental and husbandry effects during the course of this experiment, we can surmise that these two factors were the major drivers of the differences we saw between the two replicate experiments, as genetic backgrounds were mostly comprised of iso-female lines. The largest discrepancies between two years were seen with regards to maximum lifespans. While median lifespans were not changed to a large degree between years/seasons, maximum lifespans were significantly longer in summer 2019 in both sexes. We have several hypotheses, all related to fly husbandry, that could potentially explain this discrepancy. Our most l...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs