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[
Science,
1990]
An exhaustive study of the tiny roundworm C. elegans has revealed a wealth of information about development and the brain. And now the effort to decipher the worm's genome is fast becoming the benchmark by which the human genome project will be measured.
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[
Nature,
1998]
In 1983, John Sulston and Alan Coulson began to construct a complete physical map of the genome of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, and started what became known as the C. elegans Genome Project. At the time, several people wondered why John, who had just described all of the cell divisions in C. elegans (the cell lineage), was interested in this project rather than in a more 'biological' problem. He replied by joking that he had a "weakness for grandiose, meaningless projects". In 1989, as the physical map approached completion, the Genome Project, now including Bob Waterston and his group, embarked on the even more ambitious goal of obtaining the complete genomic sequence
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[
Nature,
2003]
The genome of the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis briggsae has been sequenced, and show some remarkable differences from the genome of the better known - and physically similar - C. elegans.
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[
Nat Genet,
1999]
One of the founders of molecular biology, Al Hershey, proffered a vision of heaven, in which one would come into the lab every morning knowing what experiment to do, knowing that it was going to work and knowing that the results would be important. Whether the authors of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome project, published recently in Science felt they had ascended into heaven while performing this gigantic piece of work is unclear, but the project seems to fulfill Hershey's criteria.
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[
Nature,
1992]
Supporters of large DNA sequencing projects will take heart (and find much to learn) from the report by J. Sulston and colleagues that appears on page 37 of this issue. Sulston et al. describe the first results of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome sequencing project, and have come up with not only hitherto unknown genes but also with fresh and biologically relevant information.
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[
Science,
1998]
The near completion of the sequence of the C. elegans genome should provide researchers with a gold mine of information on topics ranging from evolution to gene
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[
Science,
1991]
The millimeter-long roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans is amassing a sizable research following. As more and more people have joined teh confederation of research efforts loosely called the worm project (see Science, 15 June 1990, p. 1310), the community's biennial meeting has outgrown the traditional watering hole at Cold Spring Harbor. This year, the researchers moved inland for the Eighth International C. elegans Meeting, held June 1-5 on Lake Mendota at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. More than 500 "worm people" turned out to absorb progress reports on the sequencing of the C. elegans genome, the study of its developmental pathways-and some newer topics as well.
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[
Nature,
1998]
The human genome is predicted to contain between 50,000 and 100,000 genes. To work out what these genes do, an array of techniques is needed to evaluate the protein-protein interactions and biochemical pathways of any gene product. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans is an excellent system for such studies because of its well-understood genetics and development, evolutionary conservation to human genes, small genome size and relatively short life cycle. The 100-megabase-pair genome will be completely sequenced this year, and a total of 17,000 genes have been predicted, many with human counterparts. Approaches used to manipulate gene expression in C. elegans include transposon-mediated deletion, antisense inhibition and direct isolation of deletions after mutagenesis. Although these methods have proved useful, limitations still exist.
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[
Science,
1984]
The end of 1983 saw the completion of a major project in developmental biology. All the cell divisions, deaths, and migrations that generate the embryonic, then the larval, and finally the adult forms of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans have now been traced. It is the first time the complete cell lineage of an organism of this degree of complexity, one that contains many of the diverse cell types found in all higher animals, has been determined.
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[
Nature,
1994]
On page 32 of this issue, a joint team from the Genome Sequencing Center (St. Louis, USA) and the newly founded Sanger Centre (Hinxton Hall, Cambridge, UK) report a contiguous sequence of over two megabases from chromosome III of the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. This is the longest contiguous DNA sequence yet determined, and it prompts rumination on how far we have come in the sequencing enterprise, and on how far - and where - we have