C. elegans: a sensible model for sensory biology

Abstract

From Sydney Brenner’s backyard to hundreds of labs across the globe, inspiring six Nobel Prize winners along the way, Caenorhabditis elegans research has come far in the past half century. The journey is not over. The virtues of C. elegans research are numerous and have been recounted extensively. Here, we focus on the remarkable progress made in sensory neurobiology research in C. elegans. This nematode continues to amaze researchers as we are still adding new discoveries to the already rich repertoire of sensory capabilities of this deceptively simple animal. Worms possess the sense of taste, smell, touch, light, temperature and proprioception, each of which is being studied in genetic, molecular, cellular and systems-level detail. This impressive organism can even detect less commonly recognized sensory cues such as magnetic fields and humidity.

Keywords:

• Behavior
• chemosensation
• mechanosensation
• neuron
• photosensation
• thermosensation

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Elizabeth Ronan for comments. Research in the Xu lab is supported by grants from the NIH (to X.Z.S.X).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was by reported the authors.