Transcriptional Profiling of C. elegans Adult Cells and Tissues with Age

Multicellular organisms are composed of distinct cells and tissues that coordinate highly orchestrated responses to environmental challenges, including those that arise with age. Since C. elegans is a premier model system used to study the molecular and cellular regulators of adult and aging phenotypes, cell type- and tissue-specific approaches are needed to characterize the genome-wide expression changes associated with these responses. Here we describe a method for the FACS-based isolation and RNA sequencing of dissociated cells from adult C. elegans. This technique is amenable to profiling the cell- and tissue-specific gene expression changes in C. elegans mutants, including aging models, such as the daf-2/insulin-like signaling (IIS) pathway, and in wild-type animals with age.