Worms. Big worms, small worms, slimy worms. You may not think about worms every day and you might not care for them, but some worms actually play a great role in science. I’m talking about C. elegans. These microscopic worms are being investigated by scientist all the time. They were discovered in the 1970’s by Sydney Brenner and currently an international consortium of laboratories are collaborating on a project to sequence the entire 100,000,000 bases of DNA of the C. elegans genome (CBS). So why spend so much time studying the microscopic organisms? It turns out that C. elegans happen to share many biological characteristics with humans. C. elegans have played a major role in the research of several human biological processes and diseases.
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elegans main purpose is used for human biological research, they do have differences in their make-up. The first, most noticeable difference is that they average around one millimeter in size. The worms are mostly found in lab settings and grown on petri dishes in E. coli. A second difference is that they are made up of males and hermaphrodites. Hermaphrodites can self-fertilize or mate with males but cannot they cannot fertilize each other. Sexual determination in C. elegans depends on the ratio of sex chromosomes to autosomes determines its sex. If the 6th chromosome pair is XX, then C. elegans will be a hermaphrodite. A XO combination in the 6th chromosome pair will produce a male (“A Short History of C. Elegans Research WormClassroom”). Although these worms have different characteristics and physical features from humans, they still have many similarities that assist in scientific
elegans main purpose is used for human biological research, they do have differences in their make-up. The first, most noticeable difference is that they average around one millimeter in size. The worms are mostly found in lab settings and grown on petri dishes in E. coli. A second difference is that they are made up of males and hermaphrodites. Hermaphrodites can self-fertilize or mate with males but cannot they cannot fertilize each other. Sexual determination in C. elegans depends on the ratio of sex chromosomes to autosomes determines its sex. If the 6th chromosome pair is XX, then C. elegans will be a hermaphrodite. A XO combination in the 6th chromosome pair will produce a male (“A Short History of C. Elegans Research WormClassroom”). Although these worms have different characteristics and physical features from humans, they still have many similarities that assist in scientific