  Aging in Caenorhabditis elegans is controlled, in part, by the insulin-like
signaling and heat shock response pathways. Following thermal stress,
expression levels of small heat shock protein 16.2 show a spatial patterning
across the 20 intestinal cells that reside along the length of the worm. Here,
we present a hypothesized mechanism that could lead to this patterned response
and develop a mathematical model of this system to test our hypothesis. We
propose that the patterned expression of heat shock protein is caused by a
diffusion-driven instability within the pseudocoelom, or fluid-filled cavity,
that borders the intestinal cells in C. elegans. This instability is due to the
interactions between two classes of insulin like peptides that serve
antagonistic roles. We examine output from the developed model and compare it
to experimental data on heat shock protein expression. Furthermore, we use the
model to gain insight on possible biological parameters in the system. The
model presented is capable of producing patterns similar to what is observed
experimentally and provides a first step in mathematically modeling
aging-related mechanisms in C. elegans.
