The Effects of Acute Cadmium Exposure in a C. elegans Model of Huntington's Disease

Science Center K209

Our goal this summer was to observe the effects of cadmium, a nonessential heavy metal that is often found in soil, on Huntingtin mutant and wild-type physiology. We did this by using C. elegans as a cell model. We practiced breeding the worms for the first two weeks, learning to handle them and mate them. Furthermore, we conducted cadmium dose-response curves on wild-type and mutant huntingtin worms following one hour CdCl2 exposure. We examined survival rate, brood size, and body length of the C. elegans following CdCl2 exposure. Our very preliminary data suggests that expression of the huntingtin gene coupled with CdCl2 exposure decreases cell survival when compared to wild-type worms. Moreover, we found that CdCl2 exposure reduces brood size and body length in the surviving wild-type worms. The wild-type results agree with previous reports. In the future, we hope to perform more CdCl2 exposure experiments with adjusted units, and to perform similar experiments with other neurotoxins, including manganese and chlorpyrifos, and to expand the study to include C. elegans models of Parkinsons disease mutants.