A study of Caenorhabditis elegans DAF-2 mutants by metabolomics and differential correlation networks

Daf-2 is one of the most studied mutants in C. elegans: it contains a deletion in the gene orthologue of the insulin/insulin-like growth factor (IGF) receptor. Using high resolution H-1 NMR spectroscopy, metabolomics has helped to dissect the metabolic consequences of altered daf-2 signalling. Here, we present a detailed metabolomic analysis of daf-2, using NMR spectroscopy, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to integrate information from different pathways. We have then used Pearson and partial correlation analysis to build networks to explore the central role of daf-2 in regulating fatty acid and amino acid metabolism. The results show the tight regulation between these two parts of the metabolome.