WASTED

Worm Alcohol Studies to Examine Drug Tolerance (WASTED) is a research project within SWIRL which is investigating the effects of ethanol on Lumbriculus variegatus. Ethanol produces dose-dependent motor impairment in man and other animals, including rodents, Drosophila, and C. elegans (Wallace et al., 2007). Ethanol is known to potentiate the GABAergic effects in the central nervous system of higher organisms (Davies, 2003) and to date, we have demonstrated that L. variegatus displays time and concentration-dependent effects when exposed to ethanol (Mathur et al., 2021) without the development of ethanol tolerance (Mahmood et al., 2022).  

WASTED aims to examine the behavioural effects of ethanol in L. variegatus and why this species does not develop ethanol tolerance, as well as investigate the presence or absence of GABAergic signalling in this species.  

The current findings from this study to date are available from our 2024 publication, in Genes Brain and Behavior, entitled "Concentration- and time-dependent behavioural effects of ethanol on Lumbriculus variegatus".