Key Considerations When Designing a Lifespan Assay
Developing an analysis strategy up front in parallel with experimental design is key to avoiding costly errors down the road.
Developing an analysis strategy up front in parallel with experimental design is key to avoiding costly errors down the road.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has provided remarkable insights into the biology of aging. The precisely measurable lifespan of worms has proven to be an efficient tool to assess the impact of various genetic, physiological and environmental factors on organismal aging. Lifespan assays can be labor intensive and time consuming. In this article, we will highlight the critical considerations that could make or break your lifespan assay. Our aim is to help you interpret a variety of different procedures by emphasizing the crucial considerations to ensure the success of running a lifespan assay.
One can kill nematodes by feeding them any number of noxious chemicals, but how effectively can worms predict potential human toxicity of drug leads? Also, given that the dosage is often the difference between a remedy or a poison, how well does the dosage of a drug translate between worms and humans? If worms lack most of the organ systems that would be key targets of drug toxicity, then how do we test toxicity in organ systems that the worms don’t have? We will discuss how InVivo Biosystems addresses these questions when using C. elegans as a model for drug testing.