Verbavatz, Jean-Marc, Fahmy, Karim, Erkut, Cihan, Habermann, Bianca, Kurzchalia, Teymuras V, Vasilj, Andrej, Shevchenko, Andrej, Khesbak, Hassan, Vorkel, Daniela, Penkov, Sider, Boland, Sebastian
[
International Worm Meeting,
2013]
Terrestrial animals are almost always challenged by severe desiccation. However, many species have evolved ways to survive this by transiting into an ametabolic state known as anhydrobiosis (life without water). Although known for centuries, the molecular mechanisms underlying anhydrobiosis remained poorly understood because of the lack of a good genetic model. Recently, we showed that the Caenorhabditis elegans dauer is an anhydrobiote. It can survive losing almost its entire body water provided that it is first preconditioned at a mild desiccative environment. We showed that during this preparation, worms accumulate a large amount of the disaccharide trehalose. Trehalose-deficient mutants have a dramatically reduced desiccation tolerance because of extensive damage to plasma membranes and membrane-bound organelles. However, it is very unlikely that trehalose is the only factor involved in anhydrobiosis. In search for others, we surveyed the desiccation-induced changes in the transcriptome and proteome of the worm, which revealed that the desiccation response of C. elegans is focused and involves a small number of functional pathways. Mutants of genes in these pathways most of the time exhibited reduced desiccation tolerance. Some of these pathways have been implicated in drought resistance in plants and animals (e.g. ROS and xenobiotic detoxification, heat-shock response and intrinsically disordered protein expression) and some others have not been associated with anhydrobiosis before (e.g. fatty acid desaturation and polyamine biosynthesis). Our data also suggest that sensing the decrease of ambient humidity (hygrosensation) can be associated to the head neurons. A thorough understanding of the anhydrobiotic ability of the worm can shed light on the fundamental properties of metabolism as well as the material properties of the cell.