Dietary restriction reveals sex-specific expression of the mTOR pathway genes in Japanese quails

Abstract

Limited resources affect an organisms physiology through the conserved metabolic pathway, the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR). Males and females often react differently to nutritional limitation, but whether it leads to differential mTOR pathway expression remains unknown. Recently, we found that dietary restriction (DR) induced significant changes in the expression of mTOR pathway genes in female Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica). We simultaneously exposed 32 male and female Japanese quails to either 20%, 30%, 40% restriction or ad libitum feeding for 14 days and determined the expression of six key genes of the mTOR pathway in the liver to investigate sex differences in the expression patterns. We found that DR significantly reduced body mass, albeit the effect was milder in males compared to females. We observed sex-specific liver gene expression. DR downregulated mTOR expression more in females than in males. Under moderate DR, ATG9A and RPS6K1 were increased more in males than in females. Like females, body mass in males was correlated positively with mTOR and IGF1, but negatively with ATG9A and RS6K1. Our findings highlight that sexes may cope with nutritional deficits differently and emphasise the importance of considering sexual differences in studies of dietary restriction.