C. elegans is one of the initial focus of attention for JCSG because the fully sequenced genome has been mostly annotated and is publicly available. It is a small bacteriovorous round worm (approximately 1 mm long) that despite its primitive characteristics shares many of the biological traits that are crucial for the understanding of human biology. C. elegans can be grown in the laboratory in Petri dishes seeded with bacteria, and virtually handled as a microorganism. Worldwide, C. elegans live in soil, especially in rotting vegetation and feed on microbes such as bacteria. There are two sexes: a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite and a male. Most of an adult worm body mass corresponds to the reproductive system. The C. elegans body is formed by just 959 cells, of which 302 are neurons and 81 are muscle cells. It was be the first animal whose genome was completed. The genome size is approximately 97 Megabases, distributed in 6 chromosomes, and encode for approximately 20,000 proteins. For more information about C. elegans and its genome see the special 1998 issue of Science.
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