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Using Thermotolerance to Explore Differences in Caenorhabditis elegans Diet
Author(s) -
Lee Laura,
Gomez Fernando,
Srinivasan Chandra,
Clarke Catherine F
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.888.4
Subject(s) - paraquat , caenorhabditis elegans , biology , escherichia coli , oxidative stress , bacteria , metabolism , microbiology and biotechnology , cell survival , heat shock , superoxide , toxicology , heat shock protein , in vitro , biochemistry , gene , genetics , enzyme
Previous studies indicate that aerobic respiratory metabolism in the Escherichia coli diet of Caenorhabditis elegans is important in reducing worm lifespan and compromises the worms’ ability to survive in high temperature environments for prolonged periods. We hypothesized that fermentative metabolism in the E. coli diet of C. elegans will also provide increased thermo tolerance and increased chemical tolerance. Wild type worms were raised at 22°C on one of two E. coli strains (OP50 vs. GD1 or AN180 vs. AN120) for 48 hours (first larval stage to L4 young adult). We then exposed the L4 worms to 35°C to induce oxidative stress and activate heat shock survival pathways and monitored their survival. In our chemical stress assay, we induced the production of superoxide radicals by exposing L4 worms fed either OP50 or GD1 on plates containing varying concentrations of paraquat (0 mM to 100 mM) for 20 hours. After four thermostress trials with OP50 vs. GD1 we found that 50% worms fed GD1 bacteria survive approximately 1.5 hrs longer than worms fed OP50 (p=0.005). The worms exposed to AN120 vs. AN180 E. coli showed no difference in survival between the two groups; time to 50% survival was 8–9 hours for both groups. Three paraquat trials showed that worms fed GD1 had a similar trend in survival between trials, however, there is a large amount of variation between the survival curves of the OP50 fed worms.