Figure 1. Rationale, experimental design and switch in mortality rate. (A) Age-specific mortality rates of female Drosophila vary according to dietary levels. Female flies cultured in mixed-sex populations given control food (CF) cohort show an acceleration of age-related increases in mortality rate as compared to females on restricted food (RF) cohort. The flies switched from control food to restricted food (SF) show a deceleration in age-specific mortality rate behaving as the RF cohort. (B) Schematic of the experimental design. Canton-S flies were aged for 40 days in a CF or RF diet as described in Materials and Methods. On day 40, half of the flies on the CF diet were switched to the RF diet. The time line (hours) is shown on the top. Total RNA was extracted from head/thorax at the indicated time points from CF, RF and SF cohorts. The processed RNA was hybridized to Affymetrix Drosophila 2.0 arrays