Caenorhabditis elegans is an unsegmented pseudocoelomate and lacks respiratory or circulatory systems.
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17 Facts About Caenorhabditis elegans
2.
The basic anatomy of C elegans includes a mouth, pharynx, intestine, gonad, and collagenous cuticle.
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3.
Caenorhabditis elegans neurons contain dendrites which extend from the cell to receive neurotransmitters, and a process that extends to the nerve ring for a synaptic connection between neurons.
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4.
The biggest difference is that C elegans has motor excitatory and inhibitory neurons, known as cholinergic and gabaergic neurons, which simply act as further regulation for the tiny creature.
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5.
Caenorhabditis elegans are mostly hermaphroditic organisms, producing both sperms and oocytes.
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6.
Sex determination system in C elegans is a topic that has been of interest to scientists for years.
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7.
When conditions are stressed, as in food insufficiency, excessive population density or high temperature, C elegans can enter an alternative third larval stage, L2d, called the dauer stage .
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8.
The adult C elegans hermaphrodite has 959 somatic cells and the male has 1033 cells, although it has been suggested that the number of their intestinal cells can increase by one to three in response to gut microbes experienced by mothers.
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9.
Wild isolates of Caenorhabditis elegans are regularly found with infections by Microsporidia fungi.
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10.
Caenorhabditis elegans has been a model organism for research into ageing; for example, the inhibition of an insulin-like growth factor signaling pathway has been shown to increase adult lifespan threefold; while glucose feeding promotes oxidative stress and reduce adult lifespan by a half.
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11.
Long-lived mutants of C elegans were demonstrated to be resistant to oxidative stress and UV light.
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12.
Caenorhabditis elegans exposed to 5mM lithium chloride showed lengthened life spans.
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13.
Caenorhabditis elegans has been instrumental in the identification of the functions of genes implicated in Alzheimer's disease, such as presenilin.
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14.
Caenorhabditis elegans is notable in animal sleep studies as the most primitive organism to display sleep-like states.
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15.
Caenorhabditis elegans made news when specimens were discovered to have survived the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in February 2003.
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16.
Caenorhabditis elegans was the first multicellular organism to have its whole genome sequenced.
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17.
Many scientists who research C elegans closely connect to Sydney Brenner, with whom almost all research in this field began in the 1970s; they have worked as either a postdoctoral or a postgraduate researcher in Brenner's lab or in the lab of someone who previously worked with Brenner.
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