Question: kimberley why are you so interested in worms

Kimberley Bryon answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hi laurenmcmullin,

My interest in worms comes from wanting to know how memory and learning works. When you learn something, special cells in your brain called neurons talk to each other by sending chemical messages. It is really important that they send the right amount of chemical message and I am trying to understand how they make sure that they get it right,

The human brain is really complex you have billions of neurons and trillions of connections between them. This makes it really hard to try and figure out what is going on. The nematode worm C. elegans instead has only 302 neurons and we know where they all are and which other neurons they are connected to. I use this worm because it is easier to try and figure out what is going on.

I also think that the worm is really cool. We can use it to look at so many things such as immunity, how cells die (apoptosis), how stem cells know when to divide. In fact, in recent years there have been 3 Noble prizes awarded to scientists who work on C. elegans so it is widely recognised that it is a good way of looking at things without using animals such as mice or rats, even though at first glance it is a really simple creature.

If you want to chat about it some more just leave me a comment 🙂