The Science of Starvation ... in Nematodes

When Mother Nematode was malnourished during her pregnancy, her Baby Nematodes gain the ability to handle famine better than their compatriots who were born to mothers who received normal levels of nutrition.  (Science Daily:  Underfed worms program their babies to cope with famine)

C. elegans worms whose mothers didn’t get enough to eat during pregnancy cope better with famine.

Credit: Richard Pell, Carnegie Mellon

- Science Daily

How you're supposed to discern which of these nematodes are malnourished is for you to discover.


That a poorly-treated mother can impart anything to her progeny is not the intuitive thinking since she should be weakened and consequently she would have weaker babies but instead she gives them a strength other normal nematodes do not have.

Millimeter-long C. elegans worms live in soils and rotting vegetation, where they feed on microbes such as bacteria.  A team led by Duke assistant professor L. Ryan Baugh fed one group of pregnant worms a normal diet of bacterial broth, and another group of expectant worms a watered-down version.

The researchers then reared the offspring of both groups without food for the first eight days of life, and monitored their growth and fertility over their lifespan.  As expected, after eight days of starvation, the deprived larvae grew slower and were less fertile than worms that had a healthier start in life.

But surprisingly, starved worms whose mothers ate watered-down food during pregnancy weren't as stunted as the offspring of well-fed mothers.

The differences lasted throughout their lifetimes. Baby worms born to underfed moms continued to make a better recovery long after the famine ended.

- Science Daily

There's the observation and you see from that the progeny from healthy mothers did poorly relative to the nematodes from the stressed mothers and that increased resilience lasts for life.  This had to surprise the scientists observing this since it doesn't seem to make sense.

The molecular mechanisms behind the buffering effects of maternal diet are still unclear.

Dwindling food supplies during pregnancy seem to trigger worm mothers to make bigger, better-provisioned eggs for the lean times that may lie ahead, the study shows.

One possibility is that hunger during pregnancy slows the rate of ovulation, so that the developing egg has more time to grow before it gets fertilized.

It's also possible that maternal diet causes changes in gene expression that are passed down to her offspring.

- Science Daily

Gene expression changes since the genetic complement passed to the progeny at conception is only the starting point for development and it changes during the course of development.  The degree to which it changes seems to be the surprise for science of late since there's quite a bit of it and this is one more example.

That any philosophical consideration should come from a nematode is unusual but we need to be open to anything, my brothers and sisters, because such is the nature of science.

Ed:  oh, God, that was so pontifical.  I think I might getting excited.

Hey, when we see progeny of normally-nourished nematodes all do the same but the progeny of malnourished nematodes do better in the stressed environment than their compatriots with ostensibly healthier backgrounds, we have a Bona Fide Existential Phenomenon and we must ask, with all due reverence, What Does It Mean?

Ed:  should we anticipate the gratuitous anthropomorphic reference to such a phenomenon in humans?

Naturally, since Ithaka aims to please and, after all, there's no science like bad science or we wouldn't need Facebook.

A kid from the inner city will do one hell of a lot better surviving on the street while a suburban wimpy boy won't last six minutes even after having lived in the perfect environment and his body was kept free of the horror of gluten.

Ed:  what horror is there in gluten?

There is no horror.  I made that up ... but so did corporate America so my duplicity don't fret me none.

In our human example, a city kid whose mother was likely malnourished due to poverty imparted survival strength to her progeny which the suburban kid does not have and it goes far beyond the ability to quickly learn street lingo.

Ed:  you're right as that's not just bad science, that's piss poor science.

At least we admit it.  Let's see you find an example of that from Dr Sanjay Gupta.

Ed:  who's that?

Gupta is a CNN doctor who discovered he can do more for medicine by making bank on CNN talking about it rather than, you know, wasting his time saving lives.

Ed:  do you look to him for science?

Nope.

While our human example is crap, the Bona Fide Existential Phenomenon is real in the discovery by these scientists that weakened mothers make offspring who are better able to cope with adverse conditions.  No doubt they will go back to find the biochemical answers for what happened but that still doesn't tell us why.  According to our paradigm, only the strong survive, this is upside-down since the ones who were born strong have less chance of survival than those who were not.

Are you grokking the glimmering, my brothers and sisters, since this also counts as Really Fucking Strange.  We did not expect this but ...

Ed:  such is the nature of science.  You already did that one.

Take it easy, Cynical One, as you can mock my delivery and, verily, you certainly do but there's no slap down for the content since we see it really does happen.

Ed:  sure it happens ... in little fucking worms.  What reason is there I should care?

You're really not buying it with the Everything is Everything vibe, are you.  How about if I tell you scientists can differentiate strains of swine flu by the presence of any human DNA in it.  Live virus can incorporate DNA from organisms it infects and bacteria can do it too.  That's part of what makes them so crazy good at killing us and how they get better at it over time.

When a major survival skill comes from a weakened mother, we see a counterintuitive logic and we want to know how else this applies.  Nematode DNA probably isn't present in humans, at least not in any other than politicians, so we wonder if we evolved similar measures of resilience.  We have all seen the phenomenon in which big healthy tough guys can easily fold under pressure and that's why it's always important to punch the bully when he hits you since, more often than not, he will fold.

You should get your ass kicked from doing that and, at least some of the time, you will but the interesting part is how many times you won't.

Ed:  just which bully do you mean here, Pontifical Preacher?

Ah, you always were good at inductive reasoning, weren't you.