Research Perspective|Volume 1, Issue 10|pp 870—874

Dopamine suppresses octopamine signaling in C. elegans: possible involvement of dopamine in the regulation of lifespan

Satoshi Suo¹, Joseph G. Culotti^1,², Hubert H.M. Van Tol³

¹Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1X5
²Department of Medical Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1X5
³Deceased, April 20, 2006.

Received: September 22, 2009Accepted: October 19, 2009Published: October 21, 2009

Copyright: © 2009 Suo et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Amine neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline, play important roles in the modulation of behaviors and metabolism of animals. InC. elegans, it has been shown that serotonin and octopamine, an invertebrate equivalent of noradrenaline, also regulate lifespan through a mechanism related to food deprivation-mediated lifespan extension. We have shown recently that dopamine signaling, activated by the tactile perception of food, suppresses octopamine signaling and that the cessation of dopamine signaling in the absence of food leads to activation of octopamine signaling. Here, we discuss the apparent conservation of neural and molecular mechanisms for dopamine regulation of octopamine/noradrenaline signaling and a possible role for dopamine in lifespan regulation.