C. elegans are a nematode worm used as a model for many biological studies; most famously they were the first living organism to have their genome completely sequenced. More recently, worms have been used to study longevity, insulin signaling, and how these processes are connected. In Mondoux’s lab, students are using C. elegans to study the consequences of a high-glucose diet. Many other labs have shown that a high-glucose diet decreases lifespan and makes the worms less healthy as they age. However, none of this previous work had been done on males. In the “Aging” article, Mondoux’s lab determined that male C. elegans actually live a little bit longer, and have greater mobility in old age when they ingest a high-glucose diet. While a worm’s lifespan may appear very different from a human’s, these findings may have a profound impact on the way scientists study human aging in connection to diet.
"Our data shows that the response to glucose is not 'universal,' so even if we don't see the same sex differences in people, the mechanisms that lead to sex differences in C. elegans might explain how people of different genetic backgrounds react to glucose differently, or how different cells in your body react to glucose differently. For example, the pathways that are activated by a high-sugar diet in your muscle cells might be different from the pathways activated by sugar in your brain,” says Mondoux. “It is important for scientists to understand why glucose has these radically different effects on aging between the sexes in C. elegans in order to think about whether and how this might be important in human metabolic disease and aging.”
Mondoux earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She studies C. elegans in her lab “as a model system to study the molecular, cellular, and genetic responses” to a high-glucose diet. Her work has appeared in the scientific journals “Genetics,” “Blood,” and “PNAS.” In addition, Mondoux is the co-author of the chapter “Telomere Position Effect: Silencing Near the End” in the book “Telomeres.”
Emma Sikes ’16, one of the students currently mentored by Mondoux, is studying the effects of a high-glucose diet on C. elegans. Sikes, a biology major and a member of the College’s honors program, from Suffield, Conn., has worked in Mondoux’s lab since the beginning of her sophomore year. In May, Sikes received a Genetics Society of America (GSA) Travel Award to help fund her trip to the 20th annual international C. elegans conference at UCLA. At the conference, Sikes, along with Mastroianni and Kevin Deehan ’16, will present a poster titled “Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) genes regulate insulin signaling in response to a high glucose diet.” Sikes says, “My project specifically is seeking to establish a link between genes involved in spinal muscular atrophy and genes involved in insulin signaling.”
Related Information
Professor and Student Research Shows High-Glucose Diet May Lead to Longer Life-Span in Males
Biology major wins scholarship to attend conference and present findings
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