Researchers this year announced they had invented a microscopic operating table for tiny, unsegmented roundworms called nematodes. The question is: Why? What could researchers learn from creatures that can be as small as 0.3 mm (i.e., as thick as a grain of sand)?
The operating table traps individual nematodes and severs their nerves with laser pulses to study how their nervous systems repair themselves. The research could lead to treatments for human nerve damage.
It turns out nematodes are great lab specimens--they have nearly as many genes as humans, and their organs parallel ours. Rats may be biologically closer, but logistically, it's hard to beat tiny, fast-reproducing worms.
1. Fly Them in Space
Nematodes are used to test the biological effects of spaceflight, such as genetic damage that can be caused by exposure to cosmic radiation.
2. Fight Insects
Some nematodes can kill crop pests by entering insects' bodies and killing them with bacteria. Worm offspring eat the hosts before moving on.
3. Cure Disease
Recent testing suggests that more than 65 percent of human disease genes have equivalents in the genome of the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode.
4. Argue for E.T. Life
Nematodes were the sole survivors of the space shuttle Columbia crash, supporting the theory that life could migrate between planets on meteors.
5. Study Coevolution
Nematode eggs make tropical ants swell and discolor to resemble berries. Birds eat the ants; other ants forage the bird's waste and get infected.