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C. elegans is one of the most recent and fastest growing experimental animal model due to its simple body plan, inexpensiveness, and amenability to most laboratory techniques. C. elegans came to prominence in 1997 when its genome was the first animal genome to be sequenced, and in 2002 when the development of the model, mapping of every cell of an animal throughout development and discovery of programmed cell death were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Since then, it earned three additional Nobel Prizes and the C. elegans research community boomed, with its own ecosystem of services and industrial users, including Agri-Tech and Bio-Pharma companies adopting the model within their compound development pipelines.
Yet, Sydney Brenner’s initial mission for C. elegans was to solve how genetics drive neuronal activities and translate into behaviours. With a 302 neurone-strong transparent brain with little or no redundancy, a fully mapped connectome, genetically-encoded biosensors, optogenetic tools, and a fully annotated genome, Brenner’s vision now seems achievable. As machine-learning tool development follows advances in microscopy, this is a particularly exciting space for C. elegans neuroscience.
