Analyzing Fetal Origin of Adult Diseases Theory using Caenorhabditis elegans.

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Fetal-Origin of Adult Diseases (FOAD) has been suggested as the third factor, in addition to genetic and environmental, that contributes to the establishment of life-style related disease. The basis of the theory is that nutritional condition in early stage of life may trigger the epigenetic modification in the genome, which leads to obese in adult stage. The precise mechanism of the theory, however, remains to be understood. This project was performed to explore the usefulness of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system to study the FOAD.In this project, it was shown that the progeny of starvation-experienced worms accumulated more fat compared to those of normally-fed worms using fluorescent dye Nile Red. The actual fat content, determined by gas chromatography, supported the increment of fat in the second generation of starvation-experienced worms. These data indicates that worms can be a suitable model system to study FOAD theory.