Vortrag

And in the end i will summarize the most important points

C. elegans is a small organism with a length of only 1 mm. So a single petri dish can hold about ten thousand worms

the life cycle is very short. The generation time is about 3 days with more than 300 progeny at each generation. This is an important advantage for statistical analysis

with a lifespan of 2-3 weeks, C. elegans is also suitable for age research

its transparent body allows to easily follow cell fate or expression of fluorescently tagged proteins of interest in the living animal

isolation, cultivation and maintance are very simple

growth at different temperatures makes it possible to control the rate of development and can be used for temperature-sensitive mutants

a major reason why sidney brenner choosed C. elegans is the ease of genetic manipulation including forward and reverse genetic

the ability to freeze and recover makes it possible to preserve mutant strains

its invariant cell lineage makes it possible to identify all of the cells in each individual and easiliy recognizes disorders in development

C. elegans was the first multicellular organism with a fully sequenced genome and many genes are annotated and available on the internet

as a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite...males which arise from meiotic non-disjunction also occur with a frequency of about 0,2 %

have a wider girth and a tapered tail, while males have a slimmer girth and a fan-shaped tail

from a genetic point of view both self- and cross-fertilization have their advantages

There is a simple method to clearly differentiate between self- and cross-progeny based on the visible phenotype. In this case there is a different in locomotion through a mutation called roller

and as a result often remain in the same region moving in circular pattern

recombined after a hermaphrodite fertilizes its oozytes with its own sperm

all progeny did not have the roller phenotype because the copy of the wildtype roller gene from the male always complement the mutation

now i would like to introduce you to some common used methods

to facilitate work with large numbers of worms, worm sorters can be used. It can be used to quickly select large quantities of individual worms with desired characteristics

RNA interference is used to silence genes in order to determine its function

double stranded RNA to reduce gene activity

So let´s talk about the research in C. elegans

One of the most important studies in C. elegans was the million mutation project

C. elegans is not only an exellent model for the nervous system. It also used in many other research fields. In the following I go through the tissues in which research is carried out with c. elegans and give you for each two examples

No model organism can be used to answer every research question, and working with c. elegans has some limitations and disadvantages