Methods to Investigate the Molecular Basis of Progranulin Action on Neurons In Vivo Using Caenorhabditis elegans.

The C. elegans nematode is a powerful genetic tool for the study of aging, developmental biology, and neurodegenerative diseases. They are a small and simple model, but its well-known genome and presence of many human orthologs has made it an ideal model to study the effects of PGRN in vivo. Here, we will describe the protocols used by our laboratory to study how PGRN affects C. elegans neuronal morphology and locomotion behavior through the use of a loss-of-function model of the nematode otholog of the GRN gene, pgrn-1. Although these protocols have been used by us to specifically study the pgrn-1 gene, the experiments are applicable to any of the animal's genes.