The tiny worm that’s changing medicine

Healthy aging, stress, neurodegenerative disorders, microRNA, cancer—it’s a long list of health research topics, and all of it starts with C. elegans, a tiny roundworm that is fundamental to the field of genetics.

Caenorhabditis elegans is a 1-mm long nematode that consists of 1,000 cells, with a simple nervous system and six sets of chromosomes. They live for about 30 days. The animal’s simplicity makes it a perfect organism for genetic research.

C. elegans is, in the words of geneticist Dr. Stefan Taubert, “a tool for discovery.” The Taubert lab at UBC’s Department of Medical Genetics, studies stress responses at the cellular level in C. elegans, mice, and cancer cells, including high and low temperatures, starvation, and low oxygen.

“We have specific questions that we ask, and we discover the answer in C. elegans before moving forward,” said Dr. Taubert. “The whole process of discovery begins in the more basic organisms like C. elegans and then it’s translated to mammals.”

University of Toronto researcher Dr. Julie Claycomb agrees with Dr. Taubert’ sentiment. She’s made a career out of studying these worms, although admits that she didn’t like them at first. “We are studying C. elegans to figure out how stuff works. It’s fundamental, discovery-based research with implications for human health two or three steps down the road,” says Dr. Claycomb.

That down-the-line research is starting to bear fruit, and has even led to Nobel Prizes. The 2024 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine went to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA using C. elegans as a model organism. Current research at Dr. Claycomb’s lab is also focused on microRNA using C. elegans to better understand processes related to gene expression and RNA interference.

Small RNAs like microRNA are present in all human cells and will have a large impact on future health research, with C. elegans as a model. And the scientists who will make the next great discovery with C. elegans, whether on the topic of Huntington’s or healthy aging, toxicology or RNA transcription, are already being trained at Taubert’s and Claycomb’s labs.

“C. elegans is a wonderful organism for training new scientists and teaching them how to do experiments,” says Dr. Claycomb, who has showed off the little nematodes to undergrads and her son’s kindergarten class. “They are a tangible, accessible platform to do genetics, molecular biology, and genomics.”