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Assessment of Neuronal Cell Death in Caenorhabditis elegans

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Neuronal Cell Death

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2515))

Abstract

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a powerful experimental platform for cell biology studies. The molecular mechanisms that mediate cell death and neurodegeneration have been characterized extensively in the nematode. In addition, the availability of a wide arsenal of genetic and molecular tools and methodologies renders C. elegans an organism of choice for modeling human neurodegenerative diseases. Indeed, neuronal necrosis can readily be observed and examined in vivo, in the worm. In this chapter, we describe the two main approaches that are routinely used for monitoring and quantifying neuronal cell death in C. elegans. The first is based on direct visualization of dying cells via Nomarski differential interference contrast (DiC) microscopy, and the second on the assessment of neuronal survival by fluorescence microscopy.

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Acknowledgments

We thank A. Pasparaki for expert technical support. Nematode strains used in this work were provided by the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center, which is funded by the National Centre for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health, and S. Mitani (National Bioresource Project) in Japan. We thank A. Fire for plasmid vectors. This work was supported by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC-GA695190-MANNA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Crete, Crete, Greece

    Konstantinos Kounakis & Nektarios Tavernarakis

  2. Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas , Crete, Greece

    Konstantinos Kounakis & Nektarios Tavernarakis

Authors
  1. Konstantinos Kounakis
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  2. Nektarios Tavernarakis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nektarios Tavernarakis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Arezu Jahani-Asl

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Kounakis, K., Tavernarakis, N. (2022). Assessment of Neuronal Cell Death in Caenorhabditis elegans. In: Jahani-Asl, A. (eds) Neuronal Cell Death. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2515. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2409-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2409-8_19

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-2408-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-2409-8

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