Marie-Anne Felix, the Monod Institute
Scientists have discovered that C. elegans, a microscopic worm biologists have used in the lab to identify important biological phenomena, suffers from natural viral infections. This may mean that C. elegans can help scientists learn more about how hosts and viruses interact.
A workhorse of modern biology is sick, and scientists couldn’t be happier.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Jacques Monod Institute in France and Cambridge University have found that the nematode C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm used extensively for decades to study many aspects of biology, gets naturally occurring viral infections.
The discovery means C. elegans is likely to help scientists study the way viruses and their hosts interact.
“We can easily disable any of C. elegans’ genes, confront the worm with a virus and watch to see if this makes the infection worse, better or has no effect,” says David Wang, PhD. “If it changes the worm’s response to infection, we will look to see if similar genes are present in humans and other mammals.”
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