Fig. 2: Rapamycin treatment reduces age-related gut pathology and enterocyte size and elevates autophagy and barrier integrity in wDah females, but not in males.
a, Females showed greater age-related dysplasia in aged guts, which was attenuated by rapamycin treatment (200 µM), at 50 days of age (scale bar = 15 µm; n = 7 intestines, two-way ANOVA, interaction ***P < 0.001; post-hoc test). b, A higher number of female flies suffered barrier function decline (Smurf phenotype) than did males, and showed increased barrier function in response to rapamycin (200 µM), at 60 days of age (bar charts show n = 10 biological replicates of 10–19 flies per replicate, two-way ANOVA, interaction P < 0.001; post-hoc test). c, Cell size of enterocytes in females was larger than in males, and reduced to the same size as in males in response to rapamycin treatment (50, 200 and 400 µM), at 10 days of age (scale bar = 10 µm; n = 6–8 intestines, n = 10–20 enterocytes per intestine; circles indicate individual values, and diamonds represent the average value per intestine; linear mixed model, interaction P < 0.01; post-hoc test). d, The expression of Atg8a-II in the gut of females was lower than in males, and rapamycin treatment (200 µM) increased it to a similar level as in males, at 10 days of age (n = 4 biological replicates of 10 intestines per replicate, two-way ANOVA, interaction P < 0.01; post-hoc test). e, The number of LysoTracker-stained puncta in the gut of females was lower than in males, and rapamycin (200 µM) increased it to the level measured in males. Neither sex nor rapamycin had an effect on the number of Cyto-ID-stained puncta in the intestine, at 10 days of age (scale bar = 20 µm; n = 7 intestines per condition; n = 2-3 pictures per intestine; data points represent the average value per intestine; linear mixed model, interaction LysoTracker-stained puncta, P < 0.001, Cyto-ID-stained puncta, P > 0.05; post-hoc test). Data are presented as mean values ± s.e.m. For box-and-whiskers plot (c), median, 25th and 75th percentiles, and Tukey whiskers are indicated.
