Alyssa Elia
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Scott Leiser
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Molecular and integrative Physiology / Medicine
Program: UROP
Session: Session 4 (1:40pm – 2:30pm)
Authors: Alyssa Elia, Scott Leiser, Rebecca Cox
Abstract
The Leiser Lab is trying to understand the correlation between the bacteria that we eat and the effect that has on longevity. We believe that approaches to achieve better overall health into old age can be discovered by conducting experiments on the microbiome of Caenorhabditis elegans. C. elegans are a useful model specimen for aging experiments due to their short lifespan of 3 weeks and flexible diet which allows us to see how individual bacterial strains will affect health. Pseudomonas lurida (P. lurida) is a bacterial strain that is found in C elegans in the wild, and that we and others have shown decreases worm lifespan compared to their normal lab diet of the E. coli OP50. Additionally, we find that worms fed P. lurida are resistant to a superoxide stressor, paraquat. Given these variable effects on the health of the worm, we asked how P lurida would affect the worms’ health, which we measure through behavioral assays to determine the mobility and feeding behavior of the organism. We expect the experimental results to reflect decreased worm health and lifespan, indicating that there is a trade-off between stress resistance and health when fed this particular bacterium. This would indicate that bacteria in the microbiome can have opposing effects on different phenotypes, suggest a complex relationship between host and microbe.
