Tag: C. elegans

  • Nation & World

    How does infection change social behavior?

    A new study illuminates the way pathogens — and pheromones — alter social behavior in animals.

    4 minutes
    Taihong Wu (from left), Minghai Ge, and Professor Yun Zhang.
  • Nation & World

    Forgetting, fast and slow

    Forgetting generates changes in the brain and does not reverse the learning process, Harvard study finds.

    4 minutes
    Yun Zhang
  • Nation & World

    Watching sensory information translate into behavior

    A state-of-the-art microscope built by Harvard researchers will allow scientists to capture 3-D images of all the neural activity in the brains of tiny, transparent C. elegans worms as they crawl.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Perception of food consumption overrides reality

    Targeting mechanisms in the central nervous system might yield the beneficial effects of low-calorie diets on healthy aging without the need to alter food intake, suggests new research from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Neurons at work

    Using genetic tools to implant genes that produce fluorescent proteins in the DNA of transparent C. elegans worms, Harvard scientists have been able to shed light on neuron-specific “alternative splicing,” a process that allows a single gene to produce many different proteins.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    One Harvard

    One Harvard is a message to a University of many parts: Get up off your tub. Exit your silo. Share what you know. And it’s happening.

    22 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Linking insulin to learning

    Work led by Yun Zhang, associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, shows how the pathway of insulin and insulinlike peptides plays a critical role in helping to regulate learning and memory.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Sophisticated worms

    In a new study of worm locomotion, researchers show that a single type of motor neuron drives an entire sensorimotor loop.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Controlling behavior, remotely

    Researchers have been able to take control of tiny, transparent worms by manipulating neurons in their brains, using precisely targeted pulses of laser light.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Life lessons from an old worm

    Research is uncovering the genetic roots of aging, peeling back the once common understanding that creatures simply “wore out” as they aged, and slowly revealing the mechanisms that control a process determined by our genes and that proceeds at different speeds for different species.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Following the worm

    Harvard research examining the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans — tiny, transparent worms — suggest a path for investigations that may shed light on disorders such as schizophrenia.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    What makes a worm say ‘yuck’

    Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have uncovered a new way that animals detect pathogens, by detecting disruptions of critical cellular processes.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Making the worms turn

    Biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel has developed new techniques to monitor and influence the behavior of roundworms to learn how their basic nervous systems work, a first step to understanding the circuitry in more complex creatures, like humans.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Circuits of sense and sensibility’

    A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to the reaction that avoids it.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Light touch

    Physicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism.

    3 minutes