The Future of Worm Ageing

Abstract

The history of the C. elegans model in ageing research is a glittering success story. Since Tom Johnson’s realization that the longevity displayed by Mike Klass’s mutants, at the University of Colorado in the late 1980s, resulted from mutation of a single gene (age-1), we have witnessed the rapid development of this subfield of ageing research. The chapters in this book attest to the dedicated work of scores of labs that utilize the worm in an effort to understand ageing. Hundreds of researchers gather together every year at various C. elegans meetings to consider the molecular pathways and physiological consequences of the myriad of mutations that determine lifespan in this organism. The worm meeting ranks as one of the largest ageing meetings on the calendar. During the last 25 years, increasing lifespan has been the goal and also the gold standard of genetic interventions in ageing. The focus on the lifespan phenotype and its manipulation has allowed ageing research to go well beyond the worm model and enter the mainstream. But what is the future for our beloved worm in ageing research? Will we continue to see new labs established working on ageing or is the ageing field about to move to more complex, and (perhaps) more human-relevant models?