Nematodes! (Part I)

So I am finally done with my internship and free to write! And since I spent a whole month at Caltech studying nematodes, I thought I'd give you guys a little introduction into what they are and what I did there.

Here we go: a nematode is a roundworm. Some are free-living (usually in soil) while others are parasitic. The species of nematode that is studied most often is C. elegans (Caenorhabditis elegans), which is also considered a model organism, meaning that it is easy to maintain and easy to work with. It is a free-living variety and has essentially been domesticated for the lab.

I, too, worked with C. elegans for the majority of my lab work. My project involved the ecology of C. elegans, particularly what food it prefers. In the wild, C. elegans dines on soil bacteria. In the lab, it usually eats a strain of E. coli called op50. The point of the project I worked on was to determine which bacteria the worms preferred, other than op50.

To be continued in Part II...