Presenter: Benjamin Blue
Mentors: Patrick Phillips and Stephen Banse, Biology
Poster: 5
Major: Biochemistry
The understanding of how diet and health interact is often informed by conventional wisdom that reduces this complex system to the idea of some foods being “bad” while others are “good.” Advances in medicine and biology have shown that health and aging are mediated by the partition of resources to these different goals. The patterning of this process is still unknown and how diets of different quality could affect such partitioning remains to be investigated. Our goal is to break down the internal calculus that informs the mediation between these different life- history outcomes using the bacteria consuming nematode C. elegans as a model. The initial experiment was a series of choice assays to determine the relative preferences C. elegans has for different types of bacterial food. Following this we performed a series of assays to measure the effects of different food sources on C. elegans life-history. The longevity of C. elegans on each food is determined using LifeSpan machines. In order to understand how C. elegans partitions its resources on different foods we compare longevity to the reproductive patterning as measured by a microfluidic egg counter. These observations will provide greater insight into the mechanisms of resource allocation and life history developments.