worm sensorium
Aug. 1st, 2005 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowanfI haven't mentioned my wormies in ages. They just eat and grow. I have two tiers going at the moment and haven't taken out any soil so there hasnt been much to report. But I thought this article in The Scientist was interesting and wanted to remember this bit.
For Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Cori Bargmann, the worm's the thing. And not just because studying worms can tell us more about ourselves. Bargmann, who recently moved her lab from the University of California, San Francisco, to Rockefeller University, has taken to looking at problems from the worm's point of view. In addressing questions relating to nematode neurobiology and behavior, for example, "it helps to think about what the nervous system has evolved to do," she says. "What are the challenges the animal faces? What is the world it actually lives in?"
The approach has led to an appreciation of what it means to be a worm, and it has helped to explain some otherwise perplexing observations. Consider Caenorhabditis elegans' surprisingly sophisticated sense of smell. "Our own olfactory system has about 350 receptor genes," says Bargmann. Flies have maybe 150, mice around 1,000. "Worms have between 1,300 and 1,700 receptors whose main job seems to be detecting molecules in their environment," she says. Odorant receptor genes account for almost 10% of the worm genome. "That makes no sense whatsoever until you know how complex their environment really is."
A gram of garden soil, says Bargmann, contains some 107 bacteria, representing 1,000 different species of which fewer than 10% have ever been cultured in the lab. And many of those are toxic to C. elegans. "The soil is a community where everyone is basically trying to poison everyone else," says Bargmann. "So the worm is traveling through this minefield of monsters." The surfeit of chemosensory receptors, among other things, presumably helps the animals sort food from foe.
And it provides biologists like Bargmann with plenty of fodder for investigation. By identifying the molecules, cells, and neural circuits that underlie olfaction, Bargmann has provided insight into how worms sense and interact with their world. And because many of these systems are conserved through evolution, her findings could lead to a better understanding of our own brains and behavior, and thus the defects that lead to neurological disease.
I wonder if my little worm box is a friendlier habitat. :-)
For Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Cori Bargmann, the worm's the thing. And not just because studying worms can tell us more about ourselves. Bargmann, who recently moved her lab from the University of California, San Francisco, to Rockefeller University, has taken to looking at problems from the worm's point of view. In addressing questions relating to nematode neurobiology and behavior, for example, "it helps to think about what the nervous system has evolved to do," she says. "What are the challenges the animal faces? What is the world it actually lives in?"
The approach has led to an appreciation of what it means to be a worm, and it has helped to explain some otherwise perplexing observations. Consider Caenorhabditis elegans' surprisingly sophisticated sense of smell. "Our own olfactory system has about 350 receptor genes," says Bargmann. Flies have maybe 150, mice around 1,000. "Worms have between 1,300 and 1,700 receptors whose main job seems to be detecting molecules in their environment," she says. Odorant receptor genes account for almost 10% of the worm genome. "That makes no sense whatsoever until you know how complex their environment really is."
A gram of garden soil, says Bargmann, contains some 107 bacteria, representing 1,000 different species of which fewer than 10% have ever been cultured in the lab. And many of those are toxic to C. elegans. "The soil is a community where everyone is basically trying to poison everyone else," says Bargmann. "So the worm is traveling through this minefield of monsters." The surfeit of chemosensory receptors, among other things, presumably helps the animals sort food from foe.
And it provides biologists like Bargmann with plenty of fodder for investigation. By identifying the molecules, cells, and neural circuits that underlie olfaction, Bargmann has provided insight into how worms sense and interact with their world. And because many of these systems are conserved through evolution, her findings could lead to a better understanding of our own brains and behavior, and thus the defects that lead to neurological disease.
I wonder if my little worm box is a friendlier habitat. :-)
