UC San Diego

The nervous system plays critical roles in the stress response. Animals can survive and function under harsh conditions, and resist and recover from injuries because neurons perceive and respond to various stressors through specific regulatory mechanisms. Caenorhabditis elegans has served as an excellent model to discover fundamental mechanisms underlying the neuronal response to stress. The basic physiological processes that C. elegans exhibits under stress conditions are similar to those observed in higher organisms. Many molecular pathways activated by environmental and cellular stresses are also conserved. In this review, we summarize major findings in examining neuronal responses to hypoxia, oxidative stress, osmotic stress, and traumatic injury. These studies from C. elegans have provided novel insights into our understanding of neuronal responses to stress at the molecular, cellular, and circuit levels.