Wound Healing Secrets Discovered in Worms May Help Diabetics and the Elderly
Although much is known about the cellular processes skin undergoes during the healing stages of wound repair, the initial skin cell response has remained relatively elusive. Recently, however, scientists report their discovery that the initial stages of wound healing in the tiny nematode roundworm known as C. elegans may hold the key to treating wounds that are especially problematic for diabetics and the elderly.
Biologists from the University of California, San Diego have just announced in a paper to be published in the December issue of the scientific journal Current Biology, their discovery of genes that both promote and inhibit wound healing in the skin of a common roundworm known by its scientific name Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans for short.
C. elegans is a tiny soil-living worm measuring only about 1 millimeter in length that feeds on E. coli bacteria. C. elegans comes in two sexes: male and hermaphrodite. Reproduction is accomplished either through self-fertilization of a hermaphrodite or through sex between a hermaphrodite and a male. C. elegans is a popular animal model for scientific study in part because it is highly fecund, inexpensive to house and possesses a relatively simple genome for genetic study.
However, what makes this wonder worm particularly unique is that it is transparent and the number of cells it possesses is a constant 959 cells. This allows easy study of individual cells within a multicellular organism that is not possible with other animal models for experimentation with exception to the zebra fish animal model.
This cellular transparency of C. elegans is what made it possible for the authors of the paper to discover genes that are involved in wound healing. As it turns out, life in the wild (soil) is hazardous for C. elegans as it feeds on E. coli because of its easily damaged skin. According to a UC San Diego news release, Professor of Biology and lead author Andrew Chisholm, “They have a hydrostatic skeleton in which the skin and muscles are under pressure to allow the animal to stay semi-rigid, so when you jab a worm with a needle it will, in effect, explode,” he said. “But remarkably, they don’t die when you do that because they have evolved ways to very rapidly close wounds to survive in the wild. In their natural environment, their predators try to exploit the worm’s vulnerable exoskeleton. There are a whole group of fungi with tiny spikes that just sit around waiting for the worms to crawl over them so they can poke holes through their cuticle.”