Programmed aging or error catastrophe? An examination by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.

We have examined newly synthesized proteins in the young adult and in older populations of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans using two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D PAGE). A temperature-sensitive mutant strain, DH26, with a mean life span of about 15 days, under our conditions, was used to block progeny development. Nematodes of several different ages were pulse-labeled for 5 h, in vivo, with 35S-labeled E. coli, A subsequent 30-min chase with unlabeled E. coli served to rid the worms of endogenous labeled E. coli proteins. We resolve 700 or more proteins by 2D PAGE polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of extracts of young nematodes. The patterns of these proteins are highly reproducible in comparisons of independent repeats of identical experiments. No new major proteins are synthesized at any time during the adult phase (4-22 days) nor are any of the most abundant proteins not made during this period. At our level of detectability (estimated as a satellite spot containing 4% of the amount of label in a major spot) we see no misincorporation of radioactive amino acids into newly synthesized proteins. These data are inconsistent with predictions by any one of several, so called, "error catastrophe" models of senescence and also show that modulation of the highest abundancy classes of proteins are also not involved in senescence.