The egg-counter: a novel microfluidic platform for characterization of egg-laying.

Reproduction is a fundamental process that shapes the demography of every living organism yet is often difficult to assess with high precision in animals that produce large numbers of offspring. Here, we present a novel microfluidic research platform for studying egg-laying. The platform provides higher throughput than traditional solid-media behavioral assays while providing a very high degree of temporal resolution.

The coupling between healthspan and lifespan in depends on complex interactions between compound intervention and genetic background.

Aging is characterized by declining health that results in decreased cellular resilience and neuromuscular function. The relationship between lifespan and health, and the influence of genetic background on that relationship, has important implications in the development of pharmacological anti-aging interventions. Here we assessed swimming performance as well as survival under thermal and oxidative stress across a nematode genetic diversity test panel to evaluate health effects for three compounds previously studied in the Intervention Testing Program and thought to promote longevity in different ways - NP1 (nitrophenyl piperazine-containing compound 1), propyl gallate, and resveratrol.

Antioxidants green tea extract and nordihydroguaiaretic acid confer species and strain-specific lifespan and health effects in Caenorhabditis nematodes.

The Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing Program (CITP) is an NIH-funded research consortium of investigators who conduct analyses at three independent sites to identify chemical interventions that reproducibly promote health and lifespan in a robust manner. The founding principle of the CITP is that compounds with positive effects across a genetically diverse panel of Caenorhabditis species and strains are likely engaging conserved biochemical pathways to exert their effects. As such, interventions that are broadly efficacious might be considered prominent compounds for translation for pre-clinical research and human clinical applications.

The Egg-Counter: A novel microfluidic platform for characterization of egg-laying.

Reproduction is a fundamental process that shapes the demography of every living organism yet is often difficult to assess with high precision in animals that produce large numbers of offspring. Here, we present a novel microfluidic research platform for studying egg-laying. The platform provides higher throughput than traditional solid-media assays while providing a very high degree of temporal resolution.

High-throughput library transgenesis in via Transgenic Arrays Resulting in Diversity of Integrated Sequences (TARDIS).

High-throughput transgenesis using synthetic DNA libraries is a powerful method for systematically exploring genetic function. Diverse synthesized libraries have been used for protein engineering, identification of protein-protein interactions, characterization of promoter libraries, developmental and evolutionary lineage tracking, and various other exploratory assays. However, the need for library transgenesis has effectively restricted these approaches to single-cell models.