[
Worm Breeder's Gazette,
1978]
All eyes are on the newest fashion trend, the Dumpy Look . Pace setting designer I.M. Worm s androgynous wardrobe is all the rage in Paris. Bianca Jagger quips, Tres, tres - Women s Wear Daily writes, Elegans personified - Patti Smith thinks, The punks won t buy it and Craig Russell says, It fits right in with my act . A product of Mutant Isolation, Inc.
[
Worm Breeder's Gazette,
1991]
Ed Hedgecock came to Tokyo in January for the 2nd seminar on Molecular and Developmental Neurobiology and his cell migration work impressed scientists of other animal field. Sydney Brenner won the Kyoto Prize and came to Japan on 23 of October for receiving the Prize on his fourth visit in this year. He talked with his excellent joke about telescope in Astronomy and microscope in Biology. Sydney is the man who gave the main lecture in the First Meeting of Japan Molecular Biology Society. Iva Greenwald came to Japan for attending the Naito Foundation International Workshop on Morphogenesis Program in early November together with her fiance Gary Struhl. It is true that the relation between Drosophila and Caenorhabditis is very good in U.S. and Japan. Some nematode scientists in Japan got grant from Drosophila project. John Sulston gave the lecture entitled 'The Genome of Caenorhabditis' on 28th of November at the main invited lecture of the Thirteenth Meeting of Japan Molecular Biology Society in Kyoto International Congress Hall. The lecture impressed many Japanese scientists especially his 'The Logical Next Step: Genome Sequencing'. On the 27th night, 34 worm people assembled to the worm party for welcoming to him. Sixteen papers from five labs were presented at the meeting.
[
Worm Breeder's Gazette,
1993]
We have been trying to develop a set of classroom experiments that would use C. elegans to teach basic genetic concepts to high school students. For this purpose, C. elegans has obvious advantages over Drosophila, the current standard organism. Our goal is to have students doing the following experiments: isolating soil nematodes from the wild, and performing simple genetic crosses that would demonstrate dominant, recessive, and X-linked mutations. The immediate problem is teaching a high school student how to pick up and transfer a worm. First, in a class of 20-30 students, each student would ideally learn how to do this in a few minutes. Most worm-breeders will recall that it took us much longer to become proficient at worm-picking. However, a high school student will only use this skill for one or two experiments before moving on to another lab exercise. Also, most high schools only have a few low-quality dissecting microscopes that students must share, so microscope time becomes limiting. Second, the purchase of platinum wire and making of picks are inconvenient. We have had some recent success (ourselves, not with students) using bamboo skewers available in local supermarkets. It is possible to dab the skewer with sticky bacteria, and then dab up large worms to set up a mating. In this context, niceties like sterility or scratching the surface of the agar are not so important. So far we have not even tried to use C. elegans with a whole class. However, a few high school students have used C. elegans for longer-term after-school projects, and one recently won first prize in a county science fair. Please contact us if you have any suggestions or experience from teaching labs, etc.