membrane following oral ingestion). Instead, C. elegans eggs or newly hatched larvae are exposed to ethanol through bath application (145). Another disadvantage with this model is that BACs cannot be directly measured. However, if ethanol is applied at a 0.4 M concentration, previous studies in adult C. elegans have shown that an internal ethanol concentration equivalent to 100 mg/dl can be reached (146). In studies that have used this model to examine the effects of ethanol on development, ethanol exposure produced, in a dose-dependent manner, significant growth retardation, slowed the developmental process, impaired reproduction, and lead to early demise in the offspring (145, 147) indicating that ethanol can have similar effects on development in C. elegans as in human beings. Future work using this model may be able to shed light into some of the genetic mechanisms of PNEE, and whether particular genes may confer sensitivity or resistance to the toxic effects of ethanol during development (145, 147).
