Applications of the Free-Living Nematode, Caenorhabditis Elegans: A Review

The free-living nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, has been suggested as an excellent model organism in ecotoxicological studies. It is a saprophytic nematode species that inhabits soil and leaf-litter environments in many parts of the world. It has emerged to be an important experimental model in a broad range of areas including neuroscience, developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics, and biomedical science. Characteristics of this animal model that have contributed to its success include its genetic manipulability, invariant and fully described developmental program, well-characterized genome, ease of culture and maintenance, short and prolific life cycle, and small and transparent body. These features have led to an increasing use of C. elegans for environmental toxicology and ecotoxicology studies since the late 1990s. Although generally considered a soil organism, it lives in the interstitial water between soil particles and can be easily cultured in aquatic medium within the laboratory. It has been successfully used to study toxicity of a broad range of environmental toxicants using both lethal and sub lethal endpoints including behavior, growth and reproduction and feeding. In this work we review the choice, use and applications of this worm as an experimental organism for biological and biomedical researches that began in the 1960s.

Keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans, Biomedical Science, Molecular Biology, Environmental Toxicology.