The "anesthetic" effect of alcohols and alkanes in Caenorhabditis elegans (C.e.)

In order to help validate the free-living roundworm, C.e., as a simple model to study the mechanism of general anesthesia, we demonstrated that homologous series of alcohols and alkanes produced a reversible "anesthetic" effect in these worms as in other animals. Also, as in other animals, the potency of these compounds was directly related to their respective lipid solubilities within each series. The alcohols were much more potent than the alkanes even though the latter were much more lipid soluble than the alcohols. The cut-off point (a decrease followed by a loss of activity) for these compounds occurred at about C9. In mice, the alcohols had an effect analogous to that seen in C.e. but the alkanes were inactive after intraperitoneal injection.