Presenter: Samantha Nestel
Authors: Samantha Nestel, Michael Werner
Faculty Advisor: Michael Werner
Institution: University of Utah
The effect of the environment on development is critical to human health, and animal and plant ecological strategies. However, the molecular mechanisms that regulate developmental (phenotypic) plasticity remain poorly understood. When exposed to different environments, the nematodePristionchus pacificusexpresses one of two possible mouth forms: either the ‘Stenostomatous’ morph with a narrow buccal cavity and one tooth-like denticle, or the ‘Eurystomatous’ morph that has a wide buccal cavity and two teeth-like denticles. In my project, I have been assessing whether morph choice, an experimentally tractable example of developmental plasticity, is mediated by nutrition. Specifically, I am performing two experiments to test the putative connection between nutritional status and phenotype: 1) grow and collectP. pacificuson different environments and measure potential changes in metabolism, and 2) conduct dietary restriction experiments with differentPristionchusspecies to assess the generality and conservation of the diet:phenotype connection. For the first project, I initiated the growth of ten worm-pellets collected from each NGM agar and liquid culture dietary conditions, that result in differing phenotypic expression, and submitted samples to the University of Utah Metabolomics Core Facility for GC-MS and LC-MS metabolomics, to assess what metabolite differences are apparent among the two conditions. In the second project, I phenotyped four different species grown on high- or low-bacterial food conditions. Results thus far from the first experiment demonstrate that the LC/GC-MS metabolomicsdoeswork on our worms, and that 500-microliter pellets provide optimal quantification of metabolites. Results from the second experiment show that all four species exhibited significant differences in mouth form under dietary restrictive conditions. Collectively, these results suggest that 1) conducting metabolomics on our worms in different conditions is viable to address the connection between diet, gene regulation and development, and 2) that the effect of diet on morph choice is a deeply-rooted phenomenon.