Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 1 pp 813—830
Carnitine promotes recovery from oxidative stress and extends lifespan in C. elegans
- 1 Department of Spine Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, China
- 2 Department of Cardiology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, China
- 3 Hunan Yuantai Biotechnology Co., Ltd, Changsha 410000, Hunan, China
- 4 Department of General Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, China
Received: July 21, 2020 Accepted: October 5, 2020 Published: December 3, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202187How to Cite
Copyright: © 2020 Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Carnitine is required for transporting fatty acids into the mitochondria for β-oxidation. Carnitine has been used as an energy supplement but the roles in improving health and delaying aging remain unclear. Here we show in C. elegans that L-carnitine improves recovery from oxidative stress and extends lifespan. L-carnitine promotes recovery from oxidative stress induced by paraquat or juglone and improves mobility and survival in response to H2O2 and human amyloid (Aβ) toxicity. L-carnitine also alleviates the oxidative stress during aging, resulting in moderate but significant lifespan extension, which was dependent on SKN-1 and DAF-16. Long-lived worms with germline loss (glp-1) or reduced insulin receptor activity (daf-2) recover from aging-associated oxidative stress faster than wild-type controls and their long lifespans were not further increased by L-carnitine. A new gene, T08B1.1, aligned to a known carnitine transporter OCTN1 in humans, is required for L-carnitine uptake in C. elegans. T08B1.1 expression is elevated in daf-2 and glp-1 mutants and its knockdown prevents L-carnitine from improving oxidative stress recovery and prolonging lifespan. Together, our study suggests an important role of L-carnitine in oxidative stress recovery that might be important for healthy aging in humans.