Somatic aging pathways regulate reproductive plasticity in Caenorhabditis elegans.

ABSTRACT: In animals, early-life stress can result in programmed changes in gene expression that can affect their adult phenotype. In C. elegans nematodes, starvation during the first larval stage promotes entry into a stress-resistant dauer stage until environmental conditions improve. Adults that have experienced dauer (postdauers) retain a memory of early-life starvation that results in gene expression changes and reduced fecundity. Here, we show that the endocrine pathways attributed to the regulation of somatic aging in C. elegans adults lacking a functional germline also regulate the reproductive phenotypes of postdauer adults that experienced early-life starvation. We demonstrate that postdauer adults reallocate fat to benefit progeny at the expense of the parental somatic fat reservoir and e

SUBMITTER: Ow MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8291976 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature