Abstract #1038

In Vivo High-Resolution Magic Angle Spinning Proton MR Spectroscopy of Small Whole-Model Organism C. Elegans

Valeria Righi^1,2, Alex A. Soukas³, Gary Ruvkun³, A Aria Tzika^1,2

¹NMR Surgical Laboratory, Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital and Shriners Burns Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; ²Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States; ³Department of Genetics, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

We demonstrate metabolic biomarker profiles with high-resolution magic angle spinning proton MR spectroscopy (HRMAS H1 MRS) of living Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) worms. This work opens up perspectives for the use of H1 HRMAS-MRS as a metabolic profiling method for C. elegans. Because it is amenable to high throughput and is shown to be highly informative, this approach may lead to a functional and integrated metabolomic analytic approach of the small organism C. elegans, which has been used extensively in studies of aberrant metabolism, and should help in identifying, investigating, and even validating new pharmaceutical targets for metabolic diseases.