Longevity and stress in Caenorhabditis elegans

Katherine I. Zhou¹, Zachary Pincus¹, Frank J. Slack¹

¹Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, PO Box 208103, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520

Received: August 24, 2011Accepted: August 26, 2011Published: August 28, 2011

Copyright: © 2011 Zhou et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

It has long been understood that many of the same manipulations that increase longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans also increase resistance to various acute stressors, and vice-versa; moreover these findings hold in more complex organisms as well. Nevertheless, the mechanistic relationship between these phenotypes remains unclear, and in many cases the overlap between stress resistance and longevity is inexact. Here we review the known connections between stress resistance and longevity, discuss instances in which these connections are absent, and summarize the theoretical explanations that have been posited for these phenomena.