Application of Caenorhabditis elegans in the evaluation of food nutrition: A review

At present, more and more people are suffering from various diseases and it is particularly important to find a suitable biological model to evaluate the prevention and treatment effects of various drugs and active ingredients on diseases. In all biological models, Caenorhabditis elegans is a kind of organism that is easy to observe and cultivate, has a clear genetic background and a high degree of signal pathway conservation with humans. A variety of active ingredients such as polyphenols, polysaccharides, polypeptides, and vitamins exist from natural products, which has extremely high physiological functions and medicinal values. It is highly reliable to evaluate the trophic and functional properties of the active ingredients from natural products in C. elegans. The functional properties of the active ingredients from natural products such as antiaging, anti-oxidation, regulating lipid metabolism, preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease in C. elegans were clarified in this review. At the same time, its possible pathways were summarized. The literature revealed that it had great effect to evaluate the nutrition and functionality of the active ingredients from natural products in C. elegans. Finally, the shortcomings in this field and suggestions for further improvement in this field have been emphasized.