“You’re doing WHAT in Germany?” People are often puzzled when they find out that I am in Germany to study worms for my research project. Have you ever thought about how humans and worms are connected? It goes beyond the question “would you still love me if I were a worm?" There is more overlap between humans and worms than you might think! One microscopic nematode (worm), C. elegans, is one of the most popular organisms of interest in the science field. This year, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkin won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in C. elegans. For the past four years, I also studied C. elegans in Duke’s Baugh Lab. This year in Tübingen, I am studying another type of worm called Pristionchus pacificus (P. pacificus) in the Sommer Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biology.
Can you think of some reasons why studying worms would advance the medical field? Studying humans can be very difficult due to our long lifespan and complex physiology. Therefore, studying worms can give us a starting point to understand the basics of life and science. For example, P. pacificus has a lifespan of approximately four days. This characteristic makes it easy for us to study long-term phenomena like aging or evolution.
