Shorter life and reduced fecundity can increase colony fitness in virtual Caenorhabditis elegans.

ABSTRACT: In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, loss of function of many genes leads to increases in lifespan, sometimes of a very large magnitude. Could this reflect the occurrence of programmed death that, like apoptosis of cells, promotes fitness? The notion that programmed death evolves as a mechanism to remove worn out, old individuals in order to increase food availability for kin is not supported by classic evolutionary theory for most species. However, it may apply in organisms with colonies of closely related individuals such as C. elegans in which largely clonal populations subsist on spatially limited food patches. Here, we ask whether food competition between nonreproductive adults and their clonal progeny could favor programmed death by using an in silico model of C. elegans. Colony f

SUBMITTER: Galimov ER 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7253062 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature