#LivefromLucy: 'How do hot, microscopic worms help us to understand the process of ageing?' with Dr Laetitia Chauve

Wed 30 June 2021

Lucy Cavendish College

When organisms are exposed to stress (such as heat stress) they mount a highly conserved stress response to prevent protein misfolding and aggregation. One aspect that is also quite intriguing, is that the stress response is important for longevity even in the absence of “apparent” stress. In Dr Chauve's lab, they have discovered that C. elegans hijack the stress response in neurons and use it as a thermostat to adapt to heat.

In this talk, Dr Chauve will show why these microscopic nematode C. elegans are a fantastic model organism, especially when studying ageing.

About the speaker

Dr Chauve is a molecular biologist and Lucy Cavendish postdoc researcher in the Casanuva Laboratory at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge.

Dr Chauve's work focuses on understanding inter-individual variability in stress response gene expression and its consequences on physiology. C. elegans is a great model to address this question, as these worms are genetically identical and their transparency allows the use of fluorescent gene expression reporters in different tissues.

Cost: Free