Abstract
The lips-6 gene encodes a putative lipase that plays a role in adult starvation response through a pathway that is parallel to the dauer pathway in larval Caenorhabditis elegans worms. We created a mutation of lips-6 to study its effects on lifespan and the ascaroside profile. We found that lips-6 had a wild-type lifespan and a wild-type ascaroside profile. These results suggest that the lips-6 gene plays a minimal role in C. elegans lifespan biology and does not affect the ascaroside profile until it is specifically activated by starvation in adult worms.