DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7n3df16
title: Data from: Longevity and transposon defense, the case of termite reproductives

description: Social insects are promising new models in aging research. Within single
 colonies, longevity differences of several magnitudes exist that can be
 found elsewhere only between different species. Reproducing queens (and,
 in termites, also kings) can live for several decades, whereas sterile
 workers often have a lifespan of a few weeks only. We studied aging in the
 wild in a highly social insect, the termite Macrotermes bellicosus, which
 has one of the most pronounced longevity differences between reproductives
 and workers. We show that gene-expression patterns differed little between
 young and old reproductives, implying negligible aging. By contrast, old
 major workers had many genes up-regulated that are related to transposable
 elements (TEs), which can cause aging. Strikingly, genes from the
 PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway, which are generally known to silence
 TEs in the germline of multicellular animals, were down-regulated only in
 old major workers but not in reproductives. Continued up-regulation of the
 piRNA defense commonly found in the germline of animals can explain the
 long life of termite reproductives, implying somatic cooption of germline
 defense during social evolution. This presents a striking germline/soma
 analogy as envisioned by the superorganism concept: the reproductives and
 workers of a colony reflect the germline and soma of multicellular
 animals, respectively. Our results provide support for the disposable soma
 theory of aging.
description: SI_Archive_S1File with 13,959 expressed genes after HTSeq (mnat_only_expressed_genes.txt; Format: plain text)SI_Archive_S2All Primers used for qRT-PCR (Primers.txt; Format: plain text) Transcriptome contigs used to find primers (Contigs.fa; Format: fasta) Expression Results of the qRT-PCR (qRT-PCR.xlsx; Format: Excel-File)SI_Archive_S3M. natalensis sequence identifiers for genes identified in Table S3 and respective results of the search against the Pfam database, release 30 (mnat_te_def_GOI_Pfam30.txt; Format: plain text) Sequence identifiers for genes identified in Dataset S10 of B. germanica, Z. nevadensis, C. secundus and M. natalensis with respective results of the search against the Pfam database, release 30. (all_AGO1_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text) (all_AGO2_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text) (all_AGO3_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text) (all_piwi_aub_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text)SI_Archive_S4Multiple Sequence Alignment of all CO1 sequences (M. natalensis and M. bellicosus) (co1_m_bell_m_nat.aligned.fas; FASTA format) Distance Matrix (Kimura corrected) (aligned.distmat; Format: plain text)SI_Archive_S5Complete raw read counts after HTSeq (raw_counts.csv; Format: csv) Complete normalized raw read counts after DESeq2 (normalized_counts_deseq2.csv; Format: csv)SI_Archive_S6Full results of Orthofinder inferring orthologs between M. natalensis and D. melanogaster. (OrthoFinder_OrthologousGroups_all_results_MNAT_DMEL.txt; Format: plain text) Identified single copy orthologs (OrthoFinder) between M. natalensis and D. melanogaster. (OrthoFinder_OrthologousGroups_single_copy_MNAT_DMEL.txt; Format: plain text)SI_Archive_S7DEG lists for caste wise comparison (DEG_caste.csv; Format: csv)SI_Archive_S8Annotations obtained from InterProScan, Pfam and Dfam Interproscan (interproscan.tsv; Format: tsv) Pfam (pfam.out; Format: plain text) Dfam (dfam.out; Format: plain text)SI_Archive_S9Masked multiple sequence alignment for tree inference. AGO1-3/Piwi/Aub set (ALICUT_ago1-3-piwi-aub.ginsi.vsm.fas; FASTA format)SI_Archive_S10Checking Mnat_13309 to confirm identiy as Ago3 with M. bellicosus de novo data. (1_checking_trin_mbel.txt; Format: plain text) (2_trin_ago3_vs_dmel; Format: plain text) (pfam_domains_ago3_contig.txt; Format: plain text) (protocol.txt; Format: plain text) (Trinity_contig.fa; FASTA-Format) (workflow.docx; Format: MS Word)