Developing an insect model for studying epigenetics and aging

Medical advances have extended lifespan, yet this has not been matched with prolonged health. A key challenge is to find ways to improve health and wellbeing in older age. It is therefore vital we understand the molecular aging process in order to determine how aging leads to increased disease and ill health. Epigenetic clocks, and specifically DNA methylation clocks, have recently been identified as important predictors of biological age and associated morbidity from molecular data. However, there is currently no tractable insect model system to explore and manipulate DNA methylation for aging based research.

This PhD project would begin to establish such as system. Mealybugs (small plant parasites) provide an ideal system to study epigenomic ageing processes. Females live almost double that of males and our lab has recently shown extreme sex-specific DNA methylation profiles. We have also shown mealybugs, unlike almost all studied insect species, possess promotor DNA methylation which is correlated with lower gene expression. This unique feature means mealybugs provide the closest insect DNA methylation profile to that found in mammals. In addition to providing an excellent system to study epigenomic ageing processes mealybugs are also invasive agricultural pests meaning results from this research can be applied across strategic interests.