Caenorhabditis elegans – a Model for Understanding Development and Disease

Dear Colleagues,

In the intervening time since Sydney Brenner published his seminal paper on isolating the first Caenorhabditis elegans mutants, this tiny nematode has greatly contributed to our understanding of eukaryotic biology. As a classic model organism, the worm’s rapid development, ease of genetic manipulation, and molecular toolbox have revealed many similarities to cellular development in more complicated metazoans. Further, with the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing it has become possible to use reporter genes that are expressed at physiological levels due to insertion into endogenous genes of interest and, importantly, to more closely mimic the pathology of human diseases by making genomic mutations that take advantage of the amino acid conservation shared between many proteins in humans and C. elegans.

In this Special Issue, we will highlight the many ways C. elegans continues to advance our understanding of development and disease with original research and up-to-date reviews, including a primer directed at general audiences, particularly students, for using C. elegans to understand mechanisms of human disease pathology. We plan to emphasize examples of how human genetic diseases can be modeled in C. elegans. Characterization of mutant phenotypes at the cellular and molecular levels can help to identify the role conserved genes play in cell biology and development. Modifier screens can then be performed to learn more about a given biological process and possibly identify potential targets for future therapies in humans.

We welcome your contributions and look forward to highlighting your work.

Dr. Ann K. Corsi
Dr. Andy Golden
Guest Editors

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