Figure 3.

Que prevents age-related gut dysfunction and prolongs the lifespan. (A) Representative images of the intestinal acid-base homeostasis and the non-eating intestine of 14- and 40-day-old flies without Que supplementation and 40-day-old flies with 10 µM Que supplementation. A pink ellipse indicates the CCR. “Homeostasis” refers to CCR as yellow and “Perturbed” refers to CCR as blue. “Non-eating” means the flies did not eat, and the guts are not stained with bromophenol blue. (B,C) The percentage of acid-base balanced intestines (B) and eating intestines (C) in experiment (A). N ≥ 50 flies per group. Three independent experiments were conducted. (D,E) Representative images (D) and quantification (E) of excretion deposits of 14-and 40-day-old flies without Que supplementation and 40-day-old flies with 10 µM Que supplementation. Each group included 30 flies and three independent experiments were conducted. n: number of field counted. (F,G) Representative images (F) and quantification (G) of the percentage of the smurf flies in 14- and 40-day-old flies without Que supplementation and 40-day-old flies with 10 µM Que supplementation. Smurf (+) refers to a fly that leaks the blue dye from the gut into other tissues. Each group included 15 flies and three independent experiments were conducted. (H,I) Survival percentage of female W¹¹¹⁸ flies with DMSO (blue curve) or Que (pink curve) supplementation starting from eclosion (0-day-old) or middle age (26-day-old). Each group included 100 flies. Three independent experiments were conducted. Error bars represent SDs. Log-rank test was used for lifespan analysis. Student’s t-tests, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, and **** p < 0.0001.