Analyzing Fetal Origin of Adult Diseases Theory using Caenorhabditis elegans.

胎儿源性成人疾病（FOAD）已被认为是除遗传和环境因素外，有助于建立与生活方式有关的疾病的第三个因素。该理论的基础是，生命早期的营养状况可能引发基因组的表观遗传修饰，从而导致成年期肥胖。然而，这一理论的确切机制仍有待了解。本项目旨在探讨秀丽隐杆线虫作为研究FOAD的模型系统的有效性。在这个项目中，研究表明，与使用荧光染料尼罗红正常喂食的蠕虫相比，经历过饥饿的蠕虫的后代积累了更多的脂肪。通过气相色谱法测定的实际脂肪含量支持了第二代饥饿虫脂肪的增加。这些数据表明，蠕虫可以作为一个合适的模型系统来研究FOAD理论。

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.