Figure 1. A targeted RNAi screen in fertile worms identifies four histone demethylases that significantly affect adult worm lifespan.

A) Percent change in average lifespan induced by RNAi knock-down of genes encoding specific demethylases compared to the empty vector control. Genes whose RNAi knock-down resulted in a 10% increase (solid blue bars) or decrease (solid orange bar) in lifespan were selected and their effect on lifespan was repeated at least once. Mean +/− SD of 2 independent experiments, *p<0.05. Mean lifespan and statistics for independent experiments are presented in Table S1. B) Orthologs of worm histone demethylases in mammals, and the histone marks they have been shown to regulate to date. (M) and (Ce) denote that the substrate specificity of the particular demethylase has been determined for mammals and C. elegans, respectively (Shi et al., 2004; Tsukada et al., 2006; Agger et al., 2007; Chang et al., 2007; Christensen et al., 2007; Hong et al., 2007; Klose et al., 2007; Lan et al., 2007; He et al., 2008; Karytinos et al., 2009; Kleine-Kohlbrecher et al., 2010). Blue or orange highlighted genes represent histone demethylases whose knock-down was found to increase or decrease lifespan in the RNAi screen, respectively.