Abstract
In the forms of either herbs or functional foods, plants and their products have attracted medicinal, culinary, and nutraceutical applications due to their abundance in bioactive phytochemicals. Human beings and other animals have employed those bioactive phytochemicals to improve health quality based on their broad potentials as antioxidant, anti-microbial, anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, and anti-aging effects, amongst others. For the past decade and half, efforts to discover bioactive phytochemicals both in pure and crude forms have been intensified using the Caenorhabditis elegans aging model, in which various metabolic pathways in humans are highly conserved. In this review, we summarized the aging and longevity pathways that are common to C. elegans and humans and collated some of the bioactive phytochemicals with health benefits and lifespan extending effects that have been studied in C. elegans. This simple animal model is not only a perfect system for discovering bioactive compounds but is also a research shortcut for elucidating the amelioration mechanisms of aging risk factors and associated diseases.
Highlights
Various plants and their by-products have become a major area of investigation for bioactive compounds with health benefits [1,2]
An ayurvedic polyherbal extract (PHE) derived from six herbs, including Berberis aristata, Emblica officinalis, Cyperus rotundus, Terminalia chebula Cedrus deodara, and Terminalia bellirica, has been shown to enhance the expressions of daf-16, daf-2, skn-1, sod-3, and gst-4, all of which are associated with longevity and stress response [142]
It is necessary to conduct more research focusing on the biological process of aging, with the aim of facilitating the development of potential interventions to alleviate the adverse health impact of aging-associated medical conditions such as neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases
Summary
Various plants and their by-products have become a major area of investigation for bioactive compounds with health benefits [1,2]. Many critical aspects of the human aging process have been studied in model organisms, providing us great insight into the individual elements and more importantly the operating and underlying regulatory mechanisms Amongst these organisms, the Caenorhabditis elegans model has been greatly employed for the discovery of longevity pathways as well as new anti-aging compounds with lifespan extending properties [15,16,17,18]. Collectively leading to the appreciation of the complex network underpinning the aging process This model has been explored in other dimensions, ranging from assessing the environmental factors for aging (hermetic treatments and caloric restriction), studying the age-related diseases, population and evolutionary studies, and screening of drugs with potential lifespan-extending properties [13,39,40,41,42]
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