# Talk:Caenorhabditis elegans

From Ericross
Apologies for insert-remove-insert-remove 'ping pong'.
Material inserted then removed was from a site where copyright was not immediately obvious to me, but became apparent after checking further.
Request to author for inclusion will be submitted.
Eri.

Made some minor corrections.  There are still a few things in the article that are not exactly true but not exactly false.  When I become a little more familiar with wikipedia (sorry, I'm a newbie), I may do a little more work on this.
--Leon avery 17:51, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Could someone provide some etymology about the scientific name ? It's important to give the meaning of Caenorhabditis elegans, if it is a physical and behavioural description about the animal, or if it was named after some scientist. I've seen much less important animals with the complete meaning of their scientific name.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.74.107.149 (talk) 19:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC) 

The German version says,
"Neuer-Stab zierlich[1]"
with [1] Fritz Cl. Werner:Wortelemente lateinisch-griechischer Fachausdrücke in den biologischen Wissenschaften Suhrkamp, 1. Auflage 1972.
213.47.144.254 (talk) 22:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, forgot to translate ;)
New - Stick (rod/bar) - elegant 213.47.144.254 (talk) 22:41, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

They changed their minds on the German version =) ow it is "living in mud" =)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.130.16.86 (talk) 14:39, 28 September 2010 (UTC) 

C. elegans is important! This article should be 50 pages long. I request the efforts of biology students and researchers and teachers to expand this page!!

I'm working on it! :-)  I've made the first attempt to split up the page into distinct sections.  Other plans below... Nod

Some ideas:

Expand biology section and as it grows create new subsections as appropriate (e.g. nervous system, cellular differentiation, mating system etc.).  Ultimately, these could each be separate wikipedia pages
Add information about use of RNAi in worms somewhere (model organism section)
Rather than people add their own lab to the online resources section, there should maybe be a new page for C. elegans laboratories (I removed one lab link earlier).  With so many C. elegans labs it will get unwieldly to include them all here
try to avoid mentioning individual genes on this page. Again the page will get too crowded if people just add one sentence about their favourite gene.  Important genes probably merit separate wikipedia pages which could all be linked from a C. elegans genes page (which in turn would be linked to the C. elegans page)
References section should also be moved to a separate page if it gets too big, though I think that this should maybe only contain details of key papers
I've requested (from the WormAtlas project) a high quality image of the worm to to at the top of the page...an image which doesn't have any staining.
Nod 15:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be interesting if this could be included, though I don't know how to include it without hurting the professional tone of the article. C. Elegans may hold the record for worst calamity survived by a complex organism.
Though, I think the record for an unprotected organism (the C. Elegans were in a petri dish in an aluminum canister) is the water bear. It's amazing what those things can survive.Tragic romance 09:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm far from sure if we are allowed to use their text and images without asking them for it/them each time.. However, WormAtlas states:
"Images or text created by Wormatlas may be used by individuals or organizations for non-profit educational and scientific purposes with proper acknowledgement of Wormatlas (http://www.wormatlas.org). Submitted material that appear in Wormatlas require permission from the original submitter and/or publisher prior to usage or republication."
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (link) says their info is in the public domain, but I couldn't find anything on the C. elegans II (link) site. I'm not sure if we can use their pictures too. 
I'm thinking of greatly expanding the section about the nervous system (well, actually more than just the nervous system but just to begin somewhere ;)), so it would be great if I/we could incorporate their data and pictures. Marcus 13:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I contacted Zeynep Altun at WormAtlas who gave me permission for use of the image at the top of the page.  I think they would be happy to let more images be used if you sought permission. Nod 19:46, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I added this section primarily to move the paragraph on sponge-human-worm evolution out of the genome section as it didn't really seem to belong there. I also heavily pruned and edited the aforementioned paragraph as I don't think it added much interesting information to this page. I don't think a general page on a species should get too bogged down in mentioning individual genes unless they are famously associated with that organism or play a very special role. Hopefully, others can now start adding something more substantial to this section.  Estimates of divergence dates from other major organisms might be of interest.
Nod 19:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The 'laboratory uses' section now states that 'The organism has also been identified as a model for nicotine dependence as it has been found to experience the same symptoms humans experience when they quit smoking. [4]'
Such as what? Nail biting, coughing and starting fights with strangers?
The (4) article mentions 'including acute response, tolerance, withdrawal, and sensitization'. Put that in, or remove the line as a whole?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brrrtje (talk • contribs) 14:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC) 

I'm shocked that this problem has not been fixed after over two years. I've changed that sentence to reflect the source of the information in question. Gary (talk) 03:16, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to expand on some topics, if I have time:

Strains - describe the origins of N2 and talk about the different types of strain available - natural strains and lab-indiced strains. Talk a bit about how N2 is not necessarily the same between different labs as each lab has maintaned a clone of N2 for many years now and RNASeq sequencing shows divergence between them. Description of the CGC resource and how it distributes strains.
Resources - both for data and biological samples: WormBase, 959 Nematodes, Worm Atlas, Leon Avery's page, CGC, any others? Worm Journal, Worm Breeders Gazette.
How genes are curated.
Nomenclature of genes, CDS, transcripts, CGC names, clones,
(Update : I've put in a description of the gene/CDS/transcript nomenclature in the WormBase article)
Gary Williams 16 Aug 2011  —Preceding undated comment added 17:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC). 

This review is transcluded from Talk:Caenorhabditis elegans/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs) 19:06, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I will take on the review of this article. Here are a few initial comments giving you some things to do before I review the article more fully. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
The lead section does not conform with the Manual of style
Several paragraphs are insufficiently referenced. See here for information on inline citations.
There is a "citation needed" tag in one place.
There are too many sections after the References section
Outside comment: Apologies for dropping in, but I wanted to suggest another important thing to think about. First, be wary of indiscriminately adding material just because someone used C. elegans as a model organism in their experiment. The sentence about IGF-like factors increasing lifespan, for instance, doesn't really tell us about C. elegans as an organism; C. elegans is just the tool that was used. Describing Brenner's role in studying and promoting C. elegans as a model organism and a brief description of the really seminal experiments in the field is fine, of course. Similar considerations apply for experimental design. Wikipedia isn't a how-to; the detailed description of freezing response is a bit much. What you'd want, again, is a very general overview of what sort of protocols you can carry out on worms (RNAi, microscopic observation, freezing, etc.) without the detail to actually carry them out. Choess (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Another outside comment Sorry for jumping in as well, but I want to expand on the above point by Choess. The scientific importance of this organism is immense, but the information is spread over three separate section and much of it is repeated. I think a concise section detailing the more important studies and uses in research would be better. This article should really concentrate on the biology of C. elegans. I would say there is scope for a Scientific uses of ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' article to be split out if you are worried about losing information. AIRcorn (talk) 22:41, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your comments! I will try making all the modifications to the article, though it will take a while. It's the beginning of finals weeks at my university and I am working on multiple wiki projects while juggling school work. I'll try periodic updates. GenesBrainsBehaviorNeuroscienceKL (talk) 10:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


### Further comments
Most of the concerns mentioned above have not been addressed, though I see that the "citation needed" tag has gone. I can see that  GenesBrainsBehaviorNeuroscienceKL is busy in real life. This is a difficult article to raise to GA standard because of the use made of this nematode as a model organism and the issues raised by Aircorn and Choess. A lot of the information is quite technical in nature and needs good citations to back it up. I am putting the nomination on hold for one week to allow time for improvements. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:57, 16 December 2012 (UTC)


### GA fail
I am now failing this article as it does not meet the GA criteria. No attempt has been made since the 6th December to improve it along the lines outlined above. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:C elegans male.svg will be appearing as picture of the day on October 13, 2013. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2013-10-13. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I've just done a major cleanup of the references, because I had nothing to do. However, I can't decide on content, since I don't know diddly squad about nematodes or C. elegans in particular. I will say that for this article to get to GA or FA status, a good look needs to be take at the External links section, and some other things need to be addressed.

I noticed the section on connectome references is missing a key reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154158/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.178.65.219 (talk) 15:41, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
A lot of this material should be properly formatted and included in the Further reading section (e.g. the nobel lectures).
The EL section should be trimmed to high-relevance  links and given some kind of structure that makes it easy to decide where you want to go from here.
Several paragraphs are very short. It feels more like a list of random facts than a structured presentation the main aspects of C. elegans.
Some sections, like the Evolution one are grossly underdeveloped and appear way too late in the article.
Genome and Research should be the last two sections.
"The scientific community" section is badly named and too limited in scope. It should be revamped into a sort of "scientific impact" or something, which includes the nobel prizes, the genome sequencing projects and collaborations.
Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps deserving of a mention?  fredgandt 12:51, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
Have put this in at 'see also' OpenWorm Iztwoz (talk) 11:43, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Caenorhabditis elegans/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Narayanese (talk · contribs) 05:54, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 


### Intitial comments
Lead and research sections
What kind of research is this model organism good for?
Have added sentence to lead - think rest is covered in Research section. Iztwoz (talk) 12:17, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Microanatomy
Gut granules: I think this should be moved to its own article, link through a mention somewhere in this article; given too much weight at present
Disagree with this. The section is quite small and relevant and of interest in article. Iztwoz (talk) 12:17, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Ecology
What eats these worms, is it known? (predators/parasites)
Added sentence.  Iztwoz (talk) 12:54, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
I realise now there's very little known, but I like the addition you did. Narayanese (talk) 20:05, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Notable Findings
Move/merge chromosome number and sex determination into genome
Merged to Reproduction and development but may need a citation. Iztwoz (talk) 12:39, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Per WP:SCICITE it doesn't actually need that citation - it's textbook stuff.
Move/cut down the section on meiosis to reproduction - is radiation resistance really that notable discovery?
It's the repair mechanism involved in the radiation part that is of interest so overall would agree that since it is missing in other organisms is a notable discovery. Iztwoz (talk) 05:56, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Also feel that info on meiosis is more relevant to findings than to reproduction section  Iztwoz (talk) 17:24, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Genome
"Introns, or non-expressed sequences, are 26% of the genome" is unclear if its intergenic as well - why would you only give the number for introns?
Why the dislike of whole genome shotgun?
rm changed link to genome sequencing as per entry and rm arguable criticism of technique Iztwoz (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
**(nitpicking, unimportant) "gene predictions": new genes would be discovered by mRNA sequencing or so, not dependent on prediction from dna sequence, right?    Gene model

Evolution
The cited paper is weak evidence.
Article history is stable. References and external links look fine. Sasata's tags have point though.
I might edit the article myself, don't be afraid to revert my changes - I don't want to end up approve my very own version for GA. Narayanese (talk) 05:54, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
Regarding the genomes of other species in the genus like C. brenneri: I think those are already done, I can find files for them at [1]. Narayanese (talk) 15:24, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Noted in text and gave ref Iztwoz (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Nice. Narayanese (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Regarding '10% of the 20,000 genes in its genome are 'essential', meaning that RNAi knockdown of those genes resulted in "sterility, embryonic or larval lethality, slow post-embryonic growth, or a post-embryonic defect." ': this is not what the cited article says (Nonv is its category of essential genes), and it makes little sense to call genes whose knockdown causes post-embryonic defects or slow growth 'essential' since the worms manage to survive. Narayanese (talk) 09:40, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Agreed very unclear and not true to ref....rm this part and replace with more generalised ref on genetic interaction. Iztwoz (talk) 17:28, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Think all your points have been covered.  Let me know if I've missed anything...thanks Iztwoz (talk) 17:45, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Yup, they are. Happy to see the little rough edges of the article going smooth through your edits. Narayanese (talk) 20:05, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


### On GA criteria
1a. Clear prose: yes, it's easy to read. Exception are Latin-derived terms like vermiform for worm-like, but at least they're wikilinked.
1b. Layout: good. Headers make sense, and the lead while near the minimum length manage to cover the basics.
2.  References: they're ok.
3a. Broad coverage: yes. It has must-haves like Brenner, WormBase, composts, cell count, genome sequencing date, RNA interference, taxonomy.
3b. You say death fluorescence and oocyte radiation resistance are not straying into too obscure topics, so I'll trust you. I see from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22872477 that meiosis has notable worm research, so fine with it's inclusion in the section.
4. Neutral: yes. I'll give you a while to have a changce to revert my edits though.
5. Stable: yes.
6. Images: there are, and they're appropriate to the subject and have a free license (CC-SA).
Narayanese (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


### Some more
"Some large, intergenic regions contain the usually found repetitive DNA sequences. " This is not really true to the spirit of what the source says: "For example, although only 26% of                        the genome sequence is predicted to be intronic, it contains 51% of the tandem repeats and 45% of the inverted repeats. The                        47% of the genome sequence that is predicted to be intergenic contains only 49% of the tandem repeats and 55% of the inverted                        repeats.", so I would remove that sentence. Narayanese (talk) 06:02, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done  Iztwoz (talk) 09:19, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Please fix the deadlink and the bare url citation. Thanks, Sasata (talk) 19:39, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Whoever inserted the IPA pronunciation for the Latin name actually reported an American pronunciation. Although it may be hard to figure out the real Latin pronunciation, this still seems wrong. As an Italian speaker (the most direct descendant of Latin, albeit still with sound shifts) I would pronounce this differently. What is the Wikipedia policy on IPA for Latin? Feangio (talk) 12:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodite adult-en.svg will be appearing as picture of the day on August 13, 2015. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2015-08-13. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:39, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

The current page says that C. Elegans contains 16,000 RNA genes.  I am unable to find support for this statement.  The edit was originally made here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caenorhabditis_elegans&oldid=308570213
However, it links to an article citing the original number of RNA genes detected in an older survey, not the newer number.  I was unable (afger some searching) to find any evidence that C. Elegans has 16,000 RNA genes (which would be pretty cool)
32.210.144.151 (talk) 23:31, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

There's been a lot of research in recent years on circadian rhythm in C. elegans, with both light and temperature entrainment. Zyxwv99 (talk) 02:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
slivdsov  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.223.200.245 (talk) 16:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC) 

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Please add monocentric chromosomal pairing photos and drawings. We should photograph Caenorhabditis elegans' chromosomes if possible, and of course add new paragraphs and links.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:410F:9100:5991:CEBC:671A:4E79 (talk) 22:38, 12 May 2016 (UTC) 

I noticed that there wasn't much information on male mating in the reproduction section, so I'm adding a short description of what occurs along with an animated gif. Kbrugman (talk) 05:33, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Smithsonian Magazine wrote 2 years ago that someone has simulated (uploaded) a C. elegans mind into a Lego robot. Not sure how to include that in this page. —Aɴᴀɴᴛᴀɢɪᴛᴀ ☍ /  13:28, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

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Because C. elegans is such an important developmental model system, I decided to seriously revamp the Reproduction and development section. I decided to split the section into two distinct sections, because, while related, a lot of the reproductive information already on the page, much of it relating to males and mating, isn't super relevant to the developmental processes that are most often studied using C. elegans as a model. While a little detailed, I feel that my edits are reasonable in terms of their accessibility to the general public, and the level of detail is reflective of nematode's importance as a developmental model system. I did some other housekeeping of the section, including moving some of the images to the anatomy section, where I thought they were more appropriate.  I added largely new section on post-embryonic development, and included a figure from worm atlas with the proper citation to clarify and give some aesthetic appeal to the section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elegans180 (talk • contribs) 18:55, 4 January 2018 (UTC) 

Currently, the taxobox for this species contains 'subspecies', but lists only varietas (variety) names. These names have no formal taxonomic rank in Zoological Nomenclature if they were established after 1960 (Article 45 of the Code), so at least "var. bristol" should not be deemed a subspecies, but rather as infrasubspecific, and not included under this heading. "var. Bergerac" on the other hand is older, and may warrant recognition as a subspecies under Article 45.6.4. Someone who is familiar with nematode taxonomy needs to fix this.Dr Mark D. Scherz 09:02, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

This animal is listed as having 302 neurons. Is that number just for a particular individual whose connectome was studied or does it apply to the whole species? I would assume that the number of neurons in an animal is not a fixed thing for a species, even an extremely simple one like this. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some species are very precisely decided by their genes even at the neurological level. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:55, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Limited information on the biologist, would be easily addressed with a section on the page of his research. ~RAM (talk) 06:11, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I'd say not to merge the articles. Nigon did significant work unrelated to Caenorhabditis elegant. sbelknap (talk) 02:52, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Closing, without a merge, given the uncontested objection and no support. Klbrain (talk) 20:34, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello @Robert L Mcleod: What was wrong with your text? It does appear https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/aerospace/space/student-space-programme/missions/index.aspx to be true. Invasive Spices (talk) 21:09, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

There's nothing about where the species was first discovered, and what its natural distribution is. This needs to be added in the lead paragraph.
The pronunciation offered at the start is wrong; 'c' is invariably a 'k' sound in Latin, 'Cae-' in Latin is pronounced like 'ki-' in 'kite' in English.
MPF (talk) 15:54, 25 September 2025 (UTC)