BioProject

Our understanding of cellular mechanisms by which animals regulate their response to starvation is limited despite the close relevance of the problem to major human health issues. More...

Our understanding of cellular mechanisms by which animals regulate their response to starvation is limited despite the close relevance of the problem to major human health issues. L1 diapause of Caenorhabditis elegans, where newly hatched first stage larval arrested in response to food-less environment, is an excellent system to study the problem. We found through genetic manipulation and lipid analysis that ceramide biosynthesis, particularly those with longer fatty acid side chains, critically impacts animal survival during L1 diapause. Genetic and expression analyses indicate that ceramide likely regulate this response by affecting gene expression and activity in multiple regulatory pathways known to regulate starvation-induced stress, including the insulin-IGF-1 signaling (IIS) pathway, Rb and other pathways that mediate pathogen/toxin/oxidative stress responses. These findings provide an important insight into the roles of sphingolipid metabolism in not only starvation response but also aging and food-response related human health problems. Overall design: Gravid C. elegans adult animals were bleached with hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide. The resulting eggs were hatched in 8–10 mL S-basal without cholesterol in 15-mL conical tubes, which were placed on an end-over-end rocker (VWR) at 20 °C. 30 hours later, starved L1s were collected for RNA preparations. Wild type and hyl-1(ok976); lagr-1(gk327) mutant were profiled in triplicate. All replicates were biological replicates. Less...