The tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, long a darling of cell biologists, is currently enjoying a new chance to bask in the scientific spotlight as the first animal to have all of its genes sequenced. Among the first to get a look at the new data, Stanford scientists compared all of the worm's genes with those of baker's yeast the most complex organism sequenced until now. It shows that we can learn the function of worm genes from the yeast, and vice versa, which makes it likely that we can also learn the function of conserved human genes from either of these organisms. The tiny worm is the first animal to have all of its DNA read and is only the second eukaryotic organism to be sequenced.
Eukaryotes carry their DNA packaged in chromosomes inside the cell nucleus.
This key feature separates plants, animals and fungi the group that includes the single-celled yeast from bacteria. At least 17 bacteria have been sequenced, but this first look at all of the genetic instructions for a multicellular organism is exciting for geneticists and developmental biologists. The new sequences are already yielding intriguing results. Botstein, J. Michael Cherry, PhD, head of the genome databases group, and seven Stanford colleagues collaborated with scientists at Boston University and the National Institutes of Health to conduct the study. They compared all of the nematode worm's 19,099 genes with the 6,217 genes of baker's yeast and looked for similarities and differences between the organisms.