"Neural coordination of systemic stress responses in Caenorhabditis elegans"

RAYES DIEGO

Conferencia; Institutional Seminar IBIOBA. CONICET-MPSP; 2020

IBIOBA

An animal uses differentsurvival strategies to cope with life-threatening situations. For instance, itcan engage in a rapid and energy-demanding ?fight-or-flight? response whenencountering a predator, or it can induce the gradual and long-lastingactivation of highly conserved cytoprotective processes in response toenvironmental stressors such as hypoxia, heat, oxidative stress, or foodshortage. In animals across the evolutionary spectrum, the continued activationof the fight-or-flight response weakens the animal?s resistance toenvironmental challenges. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms thatregulate the trade-off between flight response and long-term stressors arepoorly understood. In the first part of the talk, I will show mechanisms thatexplain how the flight response impairs cellular defense systems andaccelerates aging in the nematode Caenorhabditiselegans.In the second part of thetalk, I will present new data showing mechanisms and neural circuits underlyingdifferent foraging strategies in C.elegans. In particular, I will focus on changes that occur in thenervous system during food deprivation that condition the animal behavior´supon food encountering.