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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]
Some species of the nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) are sociable diners, clumping together to share a meal, yet others are more solitary. Why? According to a report by de Bono and Bargmann, these differences can be explained by a change of just one amino acid in a putative neuropeptide receptor.
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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,
1979]
Five years ago Brenner published an extensive genetic characterisation of the small free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Largely as a result of his pioneering work, this organism has become the subject of many different lines of research. Last May more than 120 researchers met at Cold Spring Harbor to discuss recent findings in C. elegans biology.
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[
Nature,
1993]
Myth and literature have given human immortality mixed reviews. There is, nonetheless, fairly general agreement that intimations of mortality, in the form of ageing or senescence, are regrettable and should be postponed as long as possible. On page 461 of this issue, Kenyon and co-workers report a mutation of the nematode worm Caenorahbditis elegans that more than doubles its healthy and fertile adult lifespan.
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[
Science,
1985]
The biologists who investigate nature's deepest and longest-running mystery often use the term fate map to describe the startling transformations that lie in store for the fertilized egg. It is one of the more venerable terms in embryology, and one of the most appropriate, too, for destiny and geography indeed intersect within the magnificent speck of DNA and cytoplasm that is an egg on the edge of becoming a organism. In this one cell, the entire genetic bill of lading for an animal, be it fruit fly or human, is stored, waiting to unfold with miraculous precision. It is that process of life unfurling-of cells becoming brain or backbone, of genes selectively flashing on and herding cells toward their certain fates, of tissues aggregating and differentiating toward ever more specific tasks-that both confounds and as surely delights developmental biologists.
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[
Science,
1996]
What 's the secret to long life? For the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, it's slow, easy living, in which all life's events occur in a leisurely rhythm, according to work described on page 1010 of this issue. The new research, by Siegfried Hekimi and Bernard Lakowski of McGill University in Montreal, identifies four genes that, when mutated, can make these worms use energy more efficiently, feed and swim at a slower pace-and live many times their normal life-span. Some of the experimental nematodes lived for almost 2 months, far longer than their expected 9 days.
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[
Nature,
1987]
The molecular mechanisms responsible for development of metazoan pattern and form are largely unknown. Embryos have been described and experimentally manipulated for more than a century, but only in the past few years have some of the genes and proteins that influence, and perhaps govern, development been isolated and scrutinized. These genes, cloned chiefly from the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, constitute the 'nuts-and-bolts' of developmental decision-making. The challenge to developmental biologists today is to understand the functions of these genes and to describe them in biochemical terms. Results reported at a recent meeting indicate that some elucidation of development at a molecular level will emerge from investigations of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans.
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[
Science,
1995]
Sex has lots of advantages, as the number of species that indulge in it shows. But it also poses a potentially lethal problem. Most species use distinct X and Y sex chromosomes to determine who develops as female and who as male-and the female generally has more copies of the X chromosome than the male. But the X chromosome contains many genes needed equally by males and females, threatening females with what could be a lethal excess of X-chromosome gene products-or males with an equally serious deficiency. Researchers have known for decades that humans and other sexually reproducing species survive because of a correcting mechanism known as "dosage compensation" that equalizes the expression of X-linked genes between the sexes. But only now are they beginning to figure out how
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[
Esquire,
1985]
In the end, it is attention to detail that makes all the difference. It's the center fielder's extra two steps to the left, the salesman's memory for names, the lover's phone call, the soldier's clean weapon. It is the thing that separates the men from the boys, and, very often, the living from the dead. Professional success depends on it, regardless of the field. But in big-time genetic research, attention to detail is more than just a good work habit, more than a necessary part of the routine. In big-time genetic research, attention to detail is the very meat and the god of science. It isn't something that's expected; it is simply the way of things. Those in the field, particularly those who lead the field, are slaves to detail. They labor in submerged mines of it, and haul great loads of it up from the bottom of an unseen ocean-the invisible sea of biological phenomena, upon which all living things float. Detail's rule over genetics is total and cruel. Months and even years of work have literally gone down the drain because of the most minor miscalculations. Indeed, perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of the discipline-the double-helix structure of DNA-might have been made by Linus Pauling instead of James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick. But Pauling's equations contained a simple mistake in undergraduate-level chemistry, a sin against detail that is now part of the legend. Each of the six scientists singled out here has made his mark by mastering his own particular set of