The natural environment of organisms is full of all kinds of stresses, and the ability to respond to environmental stresses is an essential feature of all cells. Many organisms have stress response pathways. Due to the conservation of genes and pathways from C. elegans to humans, and the worm advantages including a fully sequenced genome, a short life cycle, and forward and reverse genetic tractability, the C. elegans model system has been applied in many studies and has proven instrumental in studying stress responses for defining the genes, genetic pathways, and molecular mechanisms that give rise to diverse physiological processes.
The stresses, such as oxidative stress, heat stress, osmotic stress, and anoxia stress, have received significant attention in terms of their effects on gene expression, physiology and signaling pathways. Stress in C. elegans affects genes and path-ways that share high homology with humans and play an important role in various complex diseases. Here, CD BioSciences exploits several types of stress response experiments combined with C. elegans to help our customers detect the genes and pathways underlying human disease and access potential targets for drug discovery.
Schematic representation of stress response in a Caenorhabditis elegans cell. ( Rodriguez M, et al. 2013)
Oxidative stress has been proposed to be one of the main causes of aging and is implicated in age-related diseases, such as Parkinson's disease. High doses of ROS can cause oxidative stress. We provide our customers oxidative stress model service using ROS-inducing reagents, including paraquat, hydrogen peroxide and sodium arsenite. With the assistance of our services, our customers can explore the genes and oxidative stress signal transduction pathways, identify redox-sensitive proteins, and select optimal drugs for oxidative stress-associated human disease. Additionally, the comprehensive C. elegans antioxidant function assays are also utilized by CD BioSciences, such as detection of ROS, oxidative damage products, related enzyme activity.
Heat-shock response is the prominent pathway when organisms exposure to heat stress conditions. The response is highly conserved across species, including bacteria, plants, and mammals. Besides, heat shock is inexpensive and requires little additional equipment. Therefore, the technique is widely used to combine with the C. elegans community. However, there are many variations in heat-shock protocols and the accurate operation of the experiment is highly required due to the sensitivity of C. elegans to the surrounding temperature. CD BioSciences has developed validated protocols for dealing with the problems, using uniform standardization, optimal procedure and operation under strict control.
Since C. elegans normally live in the soil, it can be exposed to constant and extreme osmotic stress conditions. The worm provides an ideal experiment subject to characterize the genetic basis of animal cell osmoregulation. Studies in C. elegans suggested that worms may have independent pathways to survive the osmotic shock, including glycerol production and accumulation of damaged proteins. The two mechanisms that are employed by cells against different situations depending on osmotic stress conditions. CD BioSciences provides osmotic stress model services, including fluorescent protein aggregate measurement, detection of organic osmolytes, C. elegans analysis, and gene expression analysis involved in RNA-sequencing.
Hypoxia is a general term for "less than normal O2", which can arise during states of diseases, normal development, and changes in environmental conditions. Hypoxia can lead to decreased metabolic rate, increased glycolysis, and pausing or slowing of the cell cycle, which is also associated with oxidative stress. CD BioSciences provides advanced experiment equipment and an optimal method to meet the strict requirements of hypoxia, and services such as the analysis with other stress, including oxidative stress, heat shock stress.
C. elegans is a simple model and has been used in the study of temperature behaviors and tolerance. Cold sensitivity is broadly applicable for rapidly identifying neuronal function under specific genetic or transgenic backgrounds, as well as for the larger scale forward and reverse genetic screening. CD BioSciences provides C. elegans cold tolerance model service to help customers get insight into the mechanisms of cold adaptation, and offers a surrogate screen for broader neuronal dysfunction.
UV radiation, typically as a model genotoxin, introduces bulky DNA lesions. Genes and pathways involved in DNA repair in mammals are generally well conserved in C. elegans. Therefore, we provide service to establish a cost-effective, in vivo, genetically manipulable and physiological model for the study of the toxicological consequences of DNA damage and genotoxic agents. In addition, we can also assess the changes of ROS and SOD that act as an important indicator to evaluate and screen factors such as antioxidants that affect UV stress resistance.
To reduce toxicity by heavy metals, organisms have developed various protective systems, which are complicated regarding the multiple and varied processes of metal detoxification. C. elegans has been used to understand the mechanisms of protection against heavy metals. Here we provide a suitable platform for exploring the processes of metal detoxification to get insights into the pathology of related human diseases, and to develop a screening system for relevant drugs.
CD BioSciences is dedicated to providing the best service to accelerate the achievement of our customers' research goals. We focus on the stress model system in C. elegans to assist customers in understanding the genetics of longevity, neurobiology, and developmental biology. If you are interested in our services, please don't hesitate to contact us for more details.
Reference
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