Alcohol Dependence in C. elegans: A Behavioral Study

Overview

Objectives/Goals The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that substance abuse and addiction cost American society $559 billion dollars a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity; however, little is known of the factors that induce addiction. Addiction, specifically alcohol dependence, can be observed in the nematode C. elegans. These studies seek to pair dependence on ethyl alcohol with stress (by way of starvation), and observe the effects of various combinations of these factors on C. elegans. Methods/Materials A chemotaxis assay was developed to assess the nematodes ability to choose between alcohol and E. coli (food). Alcohol was injected into agar at locations equidistant to the lawn of E. coli, whereupon a chunk of agar containing C. elegans was placed in the middle and C. elegans were allowed to choose between alcohol or food. The test groups were: 1) worms acutely pre-exposed to alcohol and stressed, 2) worms stressed but not acutely pre-exposed to alcohol, 3) worms acutely pre-exposed to alcohol but not stressed and the control, worms that were neither acutely pre-exposed to alcohol nor stressed. C. elegans were observed at different time periods up to 120 hours. Alcohol was re-injected into the agar at 72 hours to rechallenge the worms. Worms stressed were exposed to three consecutive days of treatment. Results Patterns of statistical significance were observed in the one and three day test groups, showing that stressed worms had a higher tendency to migrate to the alcohol. A subsequent analysis was done for a pool of the 120-hour data where the variable of alcohol pre-exposure was minimized, allowing stress to be examined individually. This analysis further illustrated the patterns seen in day one and day three showing a higher tendency to seek alcohol in stressed worms in three out of four comparisons. Conclusions/Discussion The unique behavioral assay developed for this study allowed stress to be identified as a major factor in the initiation and maintenance of alcohol seeking behaviors. The results of this study could be applied to a clinical setting whereby stress-inducing factors would be identified and eliminated from the environment of those susceptible to alcohol dependence.

Competition history

• CSEF 2013 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0492

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