Caenorhabditis elegans is a small, free-living soil nematode. The adults of this species grow to be about one millimeter in length (Wood, 1988). This organism acts well as a model organism because of the easy and inexpensive nature in which it can be grown (Jorgensen and Mango, 2002). Its short life cycle provides many advantages in biological and genetic research (Jorgensen and Mango, 2002).
C. elegans is typically grown in a laboratory setting on agar-filled petri dishes, or in a liquid medium (Wood, 1988). This animal feed on Escherichia coli, a bacteria commonly found in the intestine of warm-blooded organisms (Wood, 1988). It has a tubular body with a hypodermal wall and underlying muscle system around the organs. The adults typical contain about 800 somatic cells (Kimble and Hirsch, 1979).
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When the organism moves, it produces a sinusoidal wave motion in the dorsal-ventral plane (Alberts et al., 2007). The food for this animal is taken up by a muscular pharynx and is then pumped into the intestine, which is made up of about 30 cells and is lined with microvilli (Wood, 1988). About seventy percent of the three hundred neurons of C elegans are located in the head (Wood, 1988). The nervous system also includes sensory receptors and ganglia, along with dorsal and ventral nerve cords. The sense organs, which include chemoreceptors and mechanoreceptors, are arranged in two concentric circles around the mouth (Wood,