Reference genes to study the sex-biased expression of genes regulating Drosophila metabolism

Sex is an important variable in biology. Notable differences have been observed between male and female Drosophila in regulation of metabolism, in response to nutritional challenges, and in phenotypes relevant for obesity and metabolic disorders. The differences between males and females can be expected to result from differences in gene expression. We observed that expression levels of reference genes commonly used for normalization of qRT-PCR results such as GAPDH, β-actin, and 18SrRNA, show prominent sexual dimorphism. Since this will impact relative expression and conclusions related to that, we performed a systematic analysis of candidate reference genes with the objective of identifying reference genes with stable expression in male and female Drosophila. These reference genes (LamCa, βTub60D and βTub97EF) were then used to assess sex-specific differences in expression of metabolism associated genes. Additionally, we evaluated the utility of these reference genes following a nutritional challenge and showed that LamCa and βtub97EF are stably expressed between sexes and under different nutritional conditions and are thus suitable as reference genes. Our results highlight the importance of evaluating the stability of reference genes when sex-specific differences in gene expression are studied, and identify structural genes as a category worth exploring as reference genes in other species. Finally, we also uncovered hitherto unknown sexually dimorphic expression of a number of metabolism-associated genes, information of interest to others working in the field of metabolic disorders.