Questions Over C. elegans Life Span Factors

A recent paper challenges earlier findings that germline factors expressed in normal body cells influence life span in C. elegans.

Written byCatherine Offord

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NORMAL LIFE: Top: Somatic (blue) and germline (green) cells of C. elegans Bottom: Mutant worms with germline factors in somatic cells are not longer lived.SUSAN STROME, PNAS, 113:3591-96, 2016

The paper A.K. Knutson et al., “Reevaluation of whether a soma–to–germ-line transformation extends lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans,” PNAS, 113:3591-96, 2016. Oldies Germline cells are considered immortal, because, unlike somatic cells, they can theoretically replicate indefinitely. In 2009, a study by Gary Ruvkun’s lab at Harvard Medical School reported that an insulin-deficient, long-lived Caenorhabditis elegans mutant, daf-2, misexpressed genes coding for germline factors called P-granules in its somatic cells—a result the team linked back to the mutants’ longevity (Nature, 459:1079-84). Take two The findings piqued the curiosity of C. elegans researcher and P-granule expert Susan Strome of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Interested in performing related research, she and her group set out to replicate the findings. Missing pieces Strome and colleagues searched for germline ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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