A living model for obesity and aging research: Caenorhabditis elegans

ABSTRACT

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a free-living nematode that has been extensively utilized as an animal model for research involving aging and neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, etc. Compared with traditional animal models, this small nematode possesses many benefits, such as small body size, short lifespan, completely sequenced genome, and more than 65% of the genes associated with human disease. All these characteristics make this organism an ideal living system for obesity and aging studies. This review gives a brief introduction of C. elegans as an animal model, highlights some advantages of research using this model and describes methods to evaluate the effect of treatments on obesity and aging of this organism.

KEYWORDS:

• C. elegans
• living model
• obesity
• aging

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Food Science, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, under project number MAS00450. The China Scholarship Council supported Ms. Peiyi Shen. The authors thank Ms. Jayne M. Storkson for help preparing this article.