I met Dr. Gilst last night at a Fred Hutch Lab Crawl. He's using C. elegans as a model for how organizisms metabolize and use fat. I was especially impressed that they had discovered significant differences in how C. elegans uses fat in different phases of it's life; as the worm ages, fat is used less in the maintenance of cell membrane tissue, and more is put into fat storage.

We also had an interesting conversation about how fasting triggers a strong response to use fat reserves, whereas caoloric restriction may not. In C. elegans - for each day they "starve" a worm, it's life span increases by a day (to a limit of 50% it's normal like span).

If extended to humans, you might conclude that we should eat every other day if we wanted to live longer...

One of the "science fiction" projects at Fred Hutch - Dr. Roth has developed a technique for putting animals into a state of suspended animation by exposing them to 80ppm hydrogen sulfide.

Quoted: Using another highly toxic gas, hydrogen sulfide, we found we can reversibly reduce the metabolic rate of mice: exposed to 80 ppm of hydrogen sulfide, mice enter into what we call a "hibernation-like" state, where their core temperature can be reduced as much as 11 degrees and their metabolic rate as judged by carbon dioxide production and oxygen consumption drops 10-fold. We've kept the animals in this state for 6 hours and they recover completely.

Next Hutch Gala is December 9th.

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