Longitudinal imaging of Caenorhabditis elegans in a microfabricated device reveals variation in behavioral decline during aging
- University of Pennsylvania, United States
Abstract
The roundworm C. elegans is a mainstay of aging research due to its short lifespan and easily manipulable genetics. Current, widely used methods for long-term measurement of C. elegans are limited by low throughput and the difficulty of performing longitudinal monitoring of aging phenotypes. Here we describe the WorMotel, a microfabricated device for long-term cultivation and automated longitudinal imaging of large numbers of C. elegans confined to individual wells. Using the WorMotel, we find that short-lived and long-lived strains exhibit patterns of behavioral decline that do not temporally scale between individuals or populations, but rather resemble the shortest and longest lived individuals in a wild type population. We also find that behavioral trajectories of worms subject to oxidative stress resemble trajectories observed during aging. Our method is a powerful and scalable tool for analysis of C. elegans behavior and aging.
Article and author information
Author details
Christopher Fang-Yen
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01-NS-084835)
- Matthew A Churgin
- Christopher Fang-Yen
Ellison Medical Foundation (AG-NS-1109-13)
- Sang-Kyu Jung
- Xiangmei Chen
European Commission (633589)
- Christopher Fang-Yen
National Institutes of Health (R01-NS-088432)
- David M Raizen
- Christopher Fang-Yen
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (BR2012-084)
- Christopher Fang-Yen
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2017, Churgin et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Longitudinal imaging of Caenorhabditis elegans in a microfabricated device reveals variation in behavioral decline during aging
eLife 6:e26652.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.26652
