Using Caenorhabditis elegans To Study Bioactivities of Natural Products from Small Fruits: Linking Bioactivity and Mechanism in Vivo

Natural products from small fruits elicit a variety of bioactivities studied primarily in vitro. Although rigorous, these approaches fail to replicate the inherent complexity of the whole organism, where uptake and detoxification processes limit interactions with the target of interest. Currently, most in vivo studies use rodent models, such as mice and rats. Invertebrates, such as Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes, offer an efficient alternative to rodents. C. elegans nematodes are cheap to maintain, easily cultivated in large numbers and amenable to genetic and cellular studies. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the use of C. elegans for in vivo studies of natural products. In addition, we describe our own use of C. elegans to elucidate bioactivities of blueberry proanthocyanins and a collection of resveratrol analogs, with the goal of encouraging new investigations of natural products using C. elegans.