Presenter : Sarah Mete
Mentor : Patrick Philips
Major : Human Physiology
Poster 3
Low doses of various stressors have been shown to slow the process of aging and increase tolerance to future stress in numerous organ- isms, a phenomenon known as hormesis. Previous studies conducted using C. elegans have examined heat-induced hormetic effects on lifespan; however, the presented data is conflicting and inconclusive. Studying the hormetic response to sub-lethal heat shock in C. remanei can help us understand the underlying mechanism of hormesis and its effect on lifespan in a new model organism. We pre- dicted that exposing an outbred population of C. remanei to either a mild heat stress, an acute heat shock or a combination of the two would produce a hormetic response in lifespan, observing the most beneficial response in those exposed to both treatments. The worms were raised either at 20°C, or exposed to a mild heat stress of 30°C during larval development. A subset of worms from each group were then subjected to a 36.8°C heat shock for 1 hour. We measured lifespan for each group in adult, virgin females maintained at 20°C. Surprisingly, no significant differences in lifespan were observed across the various conditions. These results stimulated the idea of us- ing RNA-sequencing to evaluate changes in gene expression to explain why no response in lifespan was observed. The sequencing data illustrated significant changes in gene expression associated with both the mild and acute heat treatments, indicating a large enough change to compensate for the heat stress but not enough to affect lifespan.