Solid plate-based dietary restriction in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Reduction of food intake without malnutrition or starvation is known to increase lifespan and delay the onset of various age-related diseases in a wide range of species, including mammals. It also causes a decrease in body weight and fertility, as well as lower levels of plasma glucose, insulin, and IGF-1 in these animals. This treatment is often referred to as dietary restriction (DR) or caloric restriction (CR). The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has emerged as an important model organism for studying the biology of aging. Both environmental and genetic manipulations have been used to model DR and have shown to extend lifespan in C. elegans. However, many of the reported DR studies in C. elegans were done by propagating animals in liquid media, while most of the genetic studies in the aging field were done on the standard solid agar in petri plates. Here we present a DR protocol using standard solid NGM agar-based plate with killed bacteria.