Pharyngeal pumping is an important physiological process in C. elegans, involving rhythmic muscle contraction and relaxation, producing suction that helps worms feed and obtain nutrients. As an excellent model organism, C. elegans can be used for toxicology studies and drug discovery. Its pharyngeal pumping is a behavior that can be scored visually and is controlled by environmental cues that activate sensory and integrated neural signals to coordinate pharyngeal activity. Therefore, it can be used as a rich biological test for screening chemical modulation. Our dedicated scientists provide high quality C. elegans pharyngeal pumping analysis services to meet each of your specific needs.

C. elegans Pharyngeal Pumping Analysis for Drug Screening

The use of simple model organisms is a common approach to developing robust experimental systems to define drug modes of action and/or toxicology, acting as an intermediary between in vivo and in vitro platforms. The use of model organisms in high-throughput screening is a promising strategy to identify genes or drugs that may be related to health and fitness, as well as to target key determinants of disease. C. elegans is an attractive model organism for medium to high throughput screening, and its ability to rapidly present and clear bacteria allow researchers to trigger and score pharyngeal pumping at any time.

Fig.1 Experimental design used to test the effect of solvents on pharyngeal pumping. (Calahorro F, et al., 2021)

C. elegans pharyngeal pumping reflects a sensory detection and downstream neuronal signaling to execute an increase in the frequency of the contraction-relaxion cycle that can be visually observed or recorded in the intact worm. The pharyngeal system, with its intrinsic genetic tractability, allows for the heterologous expression of drug targets from various species, including humans. This integration enables the investigation of the expressed drug targets using the bioassay embedded in pharyngeal pumping. Furthermore, the pharynx is a sensitive biosensor that can provide a sublethal readout of drug toxicity.

Our Services

Existing techniques for measuring feeding in C. elegans are mainly divided into two categories, one is indirect measurement, by marking food to obtain intake or by measuring the concentration of remaining food in liquid culture over time, and the other is detecting each pumping contraction. CD BioSciences provides you with high-quality, cost-effective C. elegans pharyngeal pumping assay services to help you conduct broader drug screening trials.

Our Advantages

The availability of diverse transmitter pathways and molecular targets makes pharyngeal pumping in C. elegans an excellent model system for drug screening, enabling the identification of receptor targets through a quantitative readout. At CD BioSciences, our scientists are experienced in phenotyping C. elegans. Once an analysis proposal has been communicated with you, we will implement and provide you with a reliable analysis report within a fast turnaround time. If you have any questions or specific needs, please feel free to contact us.

Reference

1. Calahorro F, Holden-Dye L, O'Connor V. Impact of drug solvents on C. elegans pharyngeal pumping[J]. Toxicology Reports, 2021, 8: 1240-1247.

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