Relative to
iron and
copper we know very little about the cellular roles of
manganese. Some studies claim that
manganese acts as a radical scavenger in unicellular organisms, while there have been other reports that
manganese causes
Parkinson's disease-like syndrome, DNA fragmentation, and interferes with cellular energy production. The goal of this study was to uncover if
manganese has any
free radical scavenging properties in the complex multicellular organism, Caenorhabditis elegans. We measured internal
manganese in supplemented worms using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and the data obtained suggest that
manganese supplemented to the growth medium is taken up by the worms. We found that
manganese did not appear to be toxic as supplementation did not negatively effect development or fertility. In fact, supplementation at higher levels accelerated development and increased total fertility of wild type worms by 16%.
Manganese-supplemented wild type worms were found to be thermotolerant and, under certain conditions, long-lived. In addition, the oxidatively challenged C. elegans strain mev-1's short life span was significantly increased after
manganese supplementation. Although
manganese appears to be beneficial to C. elegans, the mode of action remains unclear.
Manganese may work directly as a
free radical scavenger, as it has been postulated to do so in unicellular organisms, or may work indirectly by up regulating several protective factors.