From dietary excess to neurodegeneration: finding the missing links in vesicular autophagic transport degradation, and stress

Abstract

In recent years, increasing information has been uncovered regarding BEACH-domain containing proteins (BDCPs). This study aims to determine the effects of high fat and sugar diets on neurodegeneration, lipid composition and organism development in a genetic BDCP mutant model, wdfy-3, in Caenorhabditis elegans. We also examined for changes in autophagic markers under different dietary conditions. Our findings support the hypothesis that diets influence autophagy in C. elegans. Wdfy-3 mutants had different lipid profiles from N2 WT, with a diet having negligible effect within each strain. In addition, C. elegans fed with high fat and glucose diets showed an increase in autophagy, in contrast to previous experiments, prompting us to find out other variables affecting the direction of autophagic response under different diets. They also showed decreased growth under glucose diet, providing a basis to study the inverse relationship between autophagy and growth. This study provides observations that could inspire further studies of BDCPs and elucidating their role in the relationship between diet, neurodegeneration and autophagy.