Caenorhabditis elegans as a Model System to Study Human Neurodegenerative Disorders

Abstract

In recent years, advances in science and technology have improved our quality of life, enabling us to tackle diseases and increase human life expectancy. However, longevity is accompanied by an accretion in the frequency of age-related neurodegenerative diseases, creating a growing burden, with pervasive social impact for human societies. The cost of managing such chronic disorders and the lack of effective treatments highlight the need to decipher their molecular and genetic underpinnings, in order to discover new therapeutic targets. In this effort, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans serves as a powerful tool to recapitulate several disease-related phenotypes and provides a highly malleable genetic model that allows the implementation of multidisciplinary approaches, in addition to large-scale genetic and pharmacological screens. Its anatomical transparency allows the use of co-expressed fluorescent proteins to track the progress of neurodegeneration. Moreover, the functional conservation of neuronal processes, along with the high homology between nematode and human genomes, render C. elegans extremely suitable for the study of human neurodegenerative disorders. This review describes nematode models used to study neurodegeneration and underscores their contribution in the effort to dissect the molecular basis of human diseases and identify novel gene targets with therapeutic potential.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Autosomal Dominant Optic Atrophy; C. elegans; Cockayne syndrome; Huntington’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; ageing; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; mitochondria; neurodegeneration.

Figure 1

Examples of C. elegans models used to study neurodegenerative disorders by expressing human disease-associated genes in specific cell types. The GABAergic neurons are illustrated in green, and magnified are the body wall muscle cells (red) and the dopaminergic neurons (orange). AD = Alzheimer’s disease, PD = Parkinson’s disease, ALS = amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, HD = Huntington’s disease, ADOA = Autosomal Dominant Optic Atrophy.

Figure 2

Selected advantages of C. elegans that render it an ideal animal model.