lecture 12 - C elegans

Question 1

what are the advantages of c elegans being a model organism?

Answer 1

it can easily be grown in a petri dish
it contains 959 somatic cells, 302 are neurons
cell lineage is known and invariant
despite their size, they are still multicellular and exhibit cell-cell communication; they die after 20 days so they quickly go through a lot of generations
it has some cancer genes that can be studied; it lacks certain organ structures

Question 2

how does forward genetics work?

Answer 2

• begin with a phenotype of interest and trace your way back to the genes that contribute to it

Question 3

how do C. elegans reproduce?

Answer 3

they are hermaphrodites, so they reproduce via self-fertilization and they become homozygous after 2 generations

Question 4

how does reverse genetics work?

Answer 4

• study function of a gene and begin with that gene to see what it encodes for and what impact it has on the phenotype