Worm food

While it is easy to see how the complete sequence of the genome of a bacterium such as Helicobacter pylori could lead to the development of novel antibiotics, or how the complete sequence of the human genome could lead to new targets to treat human disease, it is less clear how the complete sequence of the genome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, reported last week in Science, could be useful for applied research.

Nevertheless, the implications are far-reaching. First, the genome sequence makes C. elegans the first potentially completely defined and understood multicellular organism. Previous efforts have mapped the location and timing of every cell division that generates an adult nematode (with about 1000 somatic cells) from a fertilized egg, and have mapped every connection between neurons and their targets in the worm's nervous system...