Can you recnognize them?
They are Caenorhabditis elegans! Why do we want to use these worms for our research?
There are several benefits in using them as animal models:
cheap and easy to manipulate
short life cycle, useful to study their development
development is very specific, so each cell can be traced back to the embryo
widely use to model diseases, in particular neurodevelopmental discorders, congenital heart disease and kidney disease
Do you want to know more? Check this website https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/why-use-the-worm-in-research
In the next months we will work a lot with these animals, in order to characterize new genes involved in neurodevelopmental disorders.
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