November 13, 2018 – Tiny microscopic worms, invisible to the naked eye, are helping scientists to better understand an extraordinarily complex biological pathway that connects fat to overall health and aging in humans.
A team of biologists from McMaster studying these worms called C. elegans, or nematodes, has found that the regulation of lipid production, and the delicate balance of too much or too little fat, is crucial to healthy living.
The findings, published online in the journal PLOS One, point to a fundamental process of lipid regulation that happens in the WNT signaling pathway, a widely-studied genetic thoroughfare that, when mutated, is directly linked to a variety of cancers.