Inheritance of pheromone profiles from aged D. melanogaster

Pheromones modulate social behaviors like aggregation, aggression, attraction, foraging, group behavior and courtship in insects (Amrein 2004; Antony et al. 1985; Billeter et al. 2012; Bontonou and Wicker-Thomas 2014; Fletcher 1968; Greene and Gordon 2003; Krupp et al. 2008; Lebreton et al. 2012; Lu and Teal 2001; Pankiw 2004; Smedal et al. 2009; Wang and Anderson 2010). Molecularly, many pheromones are long-chain hydrocarbons that differ in chain length and saturation status and have recently been proposed to also play a role in the regulation of aging and longevity. For example, the brood pheromone of the honeybee A. mellifera has been shown to suppress extreme longevity (Smedal et al. 2009), and pheromone sensing is associated with modulation of life span in the roundworm C. elegans (Kawano et al. 2005; Ludewig et al. 2013). In the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster, most pheromones are produced by specialized cells called oenocytes (for review see Martins and Ramalho-Ortigao 2012) that are associated with the fly fat body. Following synthesis, those fly pheromones are displayed on the cuticle of the animal and referred to as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC). CHC profiles change with increasing age (Kuo et al. 2012), and altering CHC levels in the adult changes both mating behavior and longevity (Joseph et al. 2018). In addition, the putative pheromone co-receptor Or83b has been shown to affect fly life span (Libert et al. 2007). Finally, male D. melanogaster prefer younger females to older females, and this evaluation is largely made through the females age-specific CHC profiles (Kuo et al. 2012). Together, these data suggest that pheromone levels may be related to aging and longevity and may thus serve as aging biomarkers (Yew and Chung 2015).