Modeling C. elegans as a thermodynamic stable system
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Genetics
- Keywords
- genetics, C. elegans, Thermodynamic stable system
- Copyright
- © 2015 Elkington
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Modeling C. elegans as a thermodynamic stable system. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1211v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1211v1
Abstract
The nematode, C. elegans is a useful organism to study aging due to its relatively short lifespan and genetic tractability. The lifespan of a population of worms can be easily determined. Under normal conditions worms can live up to 2 weeks, and if they are under heat shock, most worms die within 2 days. In order to investigate the effects of drug concentration and temperature on an organism ability to survive, a model based on Gibbs Free Energy was used to determine under what conditions is survival rate increased or decreased. Furthermore, along with wildtype, N2, worms, a small RNA mutant, eri-6 (mg379), was studied to try to understand the role of small RNA pathways in aging and stress response. The ultimate goal of the model is to prove that the types of chemical reactions within an organism depend on temperature and substrate concentration. Worm lifespan was used as a marker for chemical reactions within an organism. Differences in aging may be a result of different types of chemistry occurring in an organism. For example a long-lived species may used redox reactions more than a short-lived species.
Author Comment
This is preprint "modeling C. elegans as a thermodynamic stable system".