Abstract
Understanding how we can age healthily is a challenge at the heart of biogerontological interest. Whereas myriad genes are known to affect the lifespan of model organisms, effects of such interventions on healthspan—the period of life where an animal is considered healthy, rather than merely alive—are less clear. To understand relationships between life- and healthspan, in recent years several platforms were developed with the purpose of assessing both readouts simultaneously. We here relied on one such platform, the WorMotel, to study effects of adulthood-restricted knock-down of 130 Caenorhabditis elegans genes on the locomotive health of the animals along their lifespans. We found that knock-down of six genes affected healthspan while lifespan remained unchanged. For two of these, F26A3.4 and chn-1, knock-down resulted in an improvement of healthspan. In follow-up experiments we showed that knockdown of F26A3.4 indeed improves locomotive health and muscle structure at old age.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Sven Van Bael for help with figures. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (633589) and the KU Leuven Research Council (C16/19/003). Strains used in this study were provided by the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center (CGC), which is funded by National Institutes of Health (Office of Research Infrastructure Programs Grant P40 OD010440).
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Jushaj, A., Churgin, M., De La Torre, M. et al. Adult-restricted gene knock-down reveals candidates that affect locomotive healthspan in C. elegans. Biogerontology 24, 225–233 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-022-10009-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-022-10009-8