Impact of Dietary Interventions on Noncoding RNA Networks

Dietary interventions dramatically affect metabolic disease and lifespan in various aging models. Here, researchers from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences profiled liver microRNA (miRNA), coding, and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) expression by high-throughput deep sequencing in mice across multiple energy intake and expenditure interventions. Strikingly, three dietary intervention network design patterns were uncovered: (1) lifespan-extending interventions largely repressed the expression of miRNAs, lncRNAs, and transposable elements; (2) protein-coding mRNAs with expression positively correlated with long lifespan are highly targeted by miRNAs; and (3) miRNA-targeting interactions mainly target chromatin-related functions.

These findings demonstrate lifespan-extending diets repress miRNA-chromatin remodeler interactions and safeguard against deregulated transcription induced by aging and lifespan shortening diets, events linked by microRNA, chromatin, and ncRNA crosstalk.