Fig. 8: wars-1 KD and high tryptophan supplementation lead to increased intracellular tryptophan and its catabolites.

a Targeted metabolomics results. The graph shows the effects of wars-1 KD or treating worms with 100 mM Trp measured by targeted metabolomics. Targeted metabolomics showed significant changes in the level of L-tryptophan and eight of its catabolites. Measured metabolite concentrations were normalized to the corresponding protein content of each sample. b Simplified pathway of tryptophan metabolism. L-tryptophan is metabolized in the cells via three main pathways: kynurenine, indole, and serotonin pathways. Each metabolic pathway results in the production of distinct catabolites, each of which plays a crucial role in cellular functions. The detected metabolites in our targeted metabolomics are highlighted in yellow. The direction of change is shown in colored arrows (red for wars-1 KD, green for 100 mM Trp), and stars show the level of significance (ns: not significant, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001). For each metabolite, ordinary one-way ANOVA was used to measure the significant differences between conditions. The Brown-Forsythe test was used to assess the equality of variances across groups and resulted in non-significant differences in the standard deviations (SDs) between conditions. The error bars represent the standard deviation (SD). For each condition (Control RNAi, wars-1 RNAi, 100 mM Trp), three biological replicates, each extracted from 7000 adult worms, were analyzed.