Projects

Screening for Compounds with Lifespan Altering Effect on Caenorhabditis Elegans and Gene Expression Microarray Data Based Computational Drug Repurposing

Lifespan is a biological process regulated by several genetic pathways. One strategy to investigate the regulation of lifespan is to use small molecules to perturb age-regulatory pathways. Here we plan to screen compounds in a biphasic approach. To find compounds that extend and decrease lifespan of C. elegans. To date, a number of molecules are known to extend or decrease lifespan in various model organisms and are used as tools to study the biology of aging and anthelminthic. The number of molecules identified thus far is small compared to the genetic “toolset” that is available to study the biology of lifespan. Caenorhabditis elegans is one of the principle models used to study aging and anthelminthic discovery because of its excellent genetics and short lifespan of three weeks. 

Here, we are choosing 50 compounds and administering them to the synchronous population of worms at three different concentrations. We, then obtain the lifespan score by counting the worms that are alive or dead over the weeks after the drug administration. The drugs that extend and decrease average lifespan with respect to the control worm culture are determined.