Caenorhabditis elegans, a widely used model organism, is the objective in our project, because its whole genome has been sequenced, and it is also the only organism to have its connectome(neuronal ‘wiring diagram’) completed by 2012 ^[1]. Adault C.elegans is about 1mm in length, 45μm in wideth and it is easily observed and manipulated under stereomicroscope[1,2]. .What more, C.elegans has a phenomenon known as eutely, which means it has fixed ‘genetically determined number of cells’[1]. These all are of great help when we doing neural operation.

Compared with other model organism like Mus musculus, which needs approximately two to three months to get matured, C.elegans possesses shorter lifespan. It is a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite lives for two to three weeks[4]. Whithin this cycle the genetics is immutable. At the same time, it can also propagate sexually, which means that the genetic phenotype of it is easy to control.

References

1. ↑ [1]Caenorhabditis elegans(WIKIPEDIA). Retrieved September 25, 2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans[3]Brenner, S., Draft, A. N. C., Chklovskii, D., System, F. F. N., Brain, T. M., & Seung, S., et al. . The connectome debate: is mapping the mind of a worm worth it?. Scientific American