Caenorhabditis elegans is an experimental organism widely used for longevity studies.
Here, we have developed an automated system called "C-HAS" to measure individual lifespan, healthspan, and frailspan. This technology provides an intrapopulation analysis to classify individual nematodes based on the differences of quality of their lifespan. Furthermore, based on the analysis results, a novel index, “Health score (HaS™️)” helps to measure the “integrated health impact on individuals” of the examined agent. Previously, this system demonstrated that it could be applied to the discovery of drugs that regulate lifespan and healthspan, but it is unclear whether it can be targeted to novel genes. So, in this study, among the possible regulators of lifespan and healthspan extracted by integrative expression analysis with existing data sets, we focused on W09D10.4/PPTC7, a gene that has no reported association with lifespan. We show that, PPTC7 knockdown extended lifespan and healthspan and increased the high-healthspan population in WT nematodes (HaS^TM = 54.85), but not in AMPK inactivation mutants (HaS^TM = 0.05), suggesting that PPTC7 is a novel AMPK-associated healthspan modulatory factor in C. elegans. In conclusion, this study establishes that this technology can be used to identify novel lifespan and healthspan regulator genes.