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A stress-sensitive reporter predicts longevity in isogenic populations of Caenorhabditis elegans

Nature Genetics 37, 894–898 (2005) | Download Citation

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Abstract

When both genotype and environment are held constant, 'chance' variation in the lifespan of individuals in a population is still quite large. Using isogenic populations of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, we show that, on the first day of adult life, chance variation in the level of induction of a green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter coupled to a promoter from the gene hsp-16.2 predicts as much as a fourfold variation in subsequent survival. The same reporter is also a predictor of ability to withstand a subsequent lethal thermal stress. The level of induction of GFP is not heritable, and GFP expression levels in other reporter constructs are not associated with differences in longevity. HSP-16.2 itself is probably not responsible for the observed differences in survival but instead probably reflects a hidden, heterogeneous, but now quantifiable, physiological state that dictates the ability of an organism to deal with the rigors of living.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of the laboratory of T.E.J., especially C. Link and S. Henderson, for comments and support; G. Amdam for insight into control theory; and A. Smith for help. Support for this work was provided by the US National Institutes of Health (to J.W.V. and to T.E.J.) and by a Polis Foundation Grant (to S.L.R.).

Author information

    • Shane L Rea
    •  & Deqing Wu

    These authors contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations

  1. Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Box 447, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.

    • Shane L Rea
    • , Deqing Wu
    • , James R Cypser
    •  & Thomas E Johnson

  2. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Konrad-Zuse-Strasse 1, D-18057, Rostock, Germany.

    • James W Vaupel

  3. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Box 447, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.

    • Thomas E Johnson

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas E Johnson.

Supplementary information

PDF files

  1. 1.

    Supplementary Fig. 1

    Western analysis.

  2. 2.

    Supplementary Fig. 2

    HSP-16::GFP expression in individual worms.

  3. 3.

    Supplementary Fig. 3

    Differential expression of MTL-2::GFP.

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    Supplementary Table 1

    Mean lifespan — selected longevity.

  5. 5.

    Supplementary Table 2

    Mean lifespan — all longevity.

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    Supplementary Table 3

    Mean survival.

  7. 7.

    Supplementary Table 4

    P value for log rank test.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1608

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