Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system to identify therapeutics for alcohol use disorders.

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) cause serious problems in society and few effective treatments are available. Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is an excellent invertebrate model to study the neurobiological basis of human behavior with a conserved, fully tractable genome, and a short generation time for fast generation of data at a fraction of the cost of other organisms.

Show Preference for Stimulants and Potential as a Model Organism for Medications Screening.

The nematode () is a popular invertebrate model organism to study neurobiological disease states. This is due in part to the intricate mapping of all neurons and synapses of the entire animal, the wide availability of mutant strains, and the genetic and molecular tools that can be used to manipulate the genome and gene expression. We have shown that, develops a conditioned preference for cues that had previously been paired with either cocaine or methamphetamine exposure that is dependent on dopamine neurotransmission, similar to findings using place conditioning with rats and mice.

Mutant and wild-type p53 form complexes with p73 upon phosphorylation by the kinase JNK.

The transcription factors p53 and p73 are critical to the induction of apoptotic cell death, particularly in response to cell stress that activates c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). Mutations in the DNA-binding domain of p53, which are commonly seen in cancers, result in conformational changes that enable p53 to interact with and inhibit p73, thereby suppressing apoptosis. In contrast, wild-type p53 reportedly does not interact with p73.