C. elegans Based Assay to Identify the Health Benefits and Toxicity of Food Ingredients

Goal 1: Develop a battery of assays to assess the health benefits of food ingredients.Develop assays for quantifying lipid storage, gut health, and oxidative stress responses in C. elegans.Develop an automated image analysis of these assays for high-throughput quantification.Test the health benefits of 6 food ingredients using these assays.Goal 2: Perform the toxicology assessment of 6 food ingredients.Study multiple toxicology using phenotypes in C. elegans.Restudy in a C. elegans strain with increased cuticle permeability.Expected outcomes: Develop 3 novel assays to quantify health-benefits-related outcomes and show the reproducibility of data from negative control populations (0.2% DMSO) over 3 independent experiments with <30% CV. Quantify the effects of 6 ingredientsand identify the EC50 with 95% confidence. Find LOAELs for all ingredients with effects in the dose range testable in wild-type and cuticle mutants. Show >5-fold increased sensitivity of cuticle mutants to certain ingredients.