WHAT EXACTLY IS Caenorhabditis elegans ANYWAY?
The life of a nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a small, free-living soil nematode that feeds on bacteria. Nematodes belong to the animal kingdom, and to the phylum Nematoda. This phylum is characterized by a bilaterally symmetric body (meaning that the two halves are reflections of each other) and by lack of segmentation (meaning that their body is continuous, not set off in segments like earthworms). There are around 12,000 known species of nematodes, some of which live in soil or water, and some of which are parasites. Parasitic nematodes you may have heard of would be Trichinella, an organism that spends part of its life cycle in pigs, and can be transmitted to humans who eat undercooked pork. C. elegans has a three day life cycle consisting of 4 larval molts, and has two adult forms: self-fertilizing hermaphrodites (with both male and female sex organs) and males (which are rare, making up less than 0.05% of the population). Under stressful conditions, the second larval stage may
