How the microscopic worm C. elegans won 4 Nobel Prizes

Four Nobels

The 1-millimeter nematode has helped scientists understand how healthy cells are instructed to kill themselves and how the process goes awry in AIDS, strokes and degenerative diseases. (That work was the subject of the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.) Self-proclaimed “worm people” were recognised by the Nobel committee in 2006 for discovering gene silencing, which became the basis for an entirely new class of drugs. Two years later, the chemistry prize went to scientists who used nematodes to help invent cellular “lanterns” that allowed biologists to see the inner workings of a cell.

For each prize, a laureate made sure to thank the worm for its contributions, though perhaps the most famous nod came from Sydney Brenner, who won the first “worm Nobel.” “Without doubt, the fourth winner of the Nobel Prize this year is Caenorhabditis elegans,” he said in his lecture in Stockholm.

‘Experimental dream’

One of the C elegans’ virtues is its simplicity, which allows scientists to test hypotheses about fundamental biological concepts in a model that is easy to understand. The nematodes have just 959 cells — a remarkably manageable number, compared with our trillions of cells — each of which scientists have named and charted from fertilisation to death. The destiny of each cell is easy to map, since the worms become translucent under the light of a microscope and cycle through all developmental stages in about three days.

The nematode was the first animal to have its genome entirely deciphered — in 1998, years before scientists were able to do the same for flies and mice. The worm is inexpensive, easy to store and entirely self-sufficient when it comes to reproduction; female C. elegans have functional sperm that allow them to inseminate themselves.

“It’s an experimental dream,” said Judith Kimble, a nematode researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Bonding over worms

Kimble attributes much of the research success to the fact that worm-bonded scientists tend to share their resources and cooperate. Ruvkun, of the Harvard Medical School, and his co-winner, Victor Ambros, a professor of molecular medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, shared their findings with each other, allowing them to piece together the mechanics of microRNA.

The C. elegans research community comes together every other year at the International Worm Convention.