Quinic acid could be a potential rejuvenating natural compound by improving survival of Caenorhabditis elegans under deleterious conditions

Quinic acid (QA) is an active ingredient of Cat's Claw (Uncaria tomentosa), which is found to be active in enhancing DNA repair and immunity in model systems and able to generate neuroprotective effects in neurons. However, QA's role in improving survival is not well studied. Here we report that QA can provide protection in Caenorhabidits elegans and improve worm survival under stress. Under heat stress and oxidative stress, QA-treated wild-type C. elegans N2 (N2) survived 17.8% and 29.7% longer, respectively, than the control worms. Our data suggest that under heat stress, QA can upregulate the expression of the small heat shock protein hsp-16.2 gene, which could help the worms survive a longer time. We also found that QA extended the C. elegans mutant VC475 [hsp-16.2 (gk249)] life span by 15.7% under normal culture conditions. However, under normal culture conditions, QA did not affect hsp-16.2 expression, but upregulated the expression of daf-16 and sod-3 in a DAF-16-dependent manner, and downregulated the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS), suggesting that under normal conditions QA acts in different pathways. As a natural product, QA demonstrates great potential as a rejuvenating compound.