Dietary thiols accelerate aging of C. elegans

We report here on the effects of prolonged supplementation and chronic restriction ofthe major cellular thiol antioxidants, NAC and GSH, on C. elegans physiology and lifespan. Nematodes proved to be a powerful model to study metabolic and signaling pathways that control aging. The high evolutionary conservation of these pathways, including the UPR, which we found to be affected by dietary thiols in worms and human cells, suggests that the results presented here can be extrapolated to higher organisms as well.