Mitochondrial clearance and HSF-1 activity are coupled to promote proteostasis capacity, organismal robustness and longevity in response to fasting

In this experiment, we aimed to determine the gene expression changes associated with a single period of transient fasting early in life in C. elegans. C. elegans worms (N2 laboratory wild-type strain) were synchornised by egg-laying, grown at 20C and removed from food (OP50) at the mid-L4 stage for 24 hours. Following this, animals were returned to food and allowed to recover for another 24 hours, after which they were exposed to heat shock (35C, 30 minutes) or kep at 20C. Worms were collected and snap frozen before RNA was extracted using an RNeasy kit (Qiagen).