elegantly dressed science

the elegant roundworm with its red make-up on

Never let it be said that this blog lacks respect for the more fact-based arts. As I said two posts ago, I have nothing but admiration for those who can extract the goodness from empirical reality and give it back to us, crystallised. Therefore, let us today celebrate (if not calibrate) the elegantly dressed roundworm, or nematode, known as Caenorhabditis elegans.

These little creatures are apparently "free-living," which makes them ideal subjects for a literary blog. They may well have a penchant for Baudelaire - or more probably Gertrude Stein - but the literature is inconclusive on that point. What is more certain is that they are a hermaphrodite species which also has a "very rare" male population. I think this shows great sense on their part: fashion loves an androgyne (just ask Yves St Laurent) almost as much as a wrap dress (itself another kind of crossover). I'm not sure what's with the males, but I'm sure if any of them are straight, single and not eaten up inside with bitterness towards their ex-wives, they must be very rare indeed.

Now, all of that aside, these roundworms are a model organism. They are known for the ease with which it is possible to maintain a whole colony of them, are very easygoing, and come from a good family: their complete cell lineage has been determined and it is full of (hermaphroditic) breeding.

Less happily, as Wikipedia tells us, our little friends are a model of nicotine dependence, as it seems they experience the same symptoms as humans when they try to quit smoking. (I'm not sure what happens when they give up 'Le Smoking'.)

My sources inform me that, although there are similarities in the protein sequences of some sponges and humans (especially those who are also 'Squarebob Spongebrain fans'), our elegant nematode is an even faster little evolver, which may explain how it came to win a Nobel Prize in 2002. The scientists who had studied C elegans* celebrated their luck at the 2003 International Worm Meeting (no direct connection** to the Diet of Worms), and are now logged on a so-called wormbase. C elegans was also the only survivor of the space shuttle Columbia crash in 2003 - which is simply as it should be, if an elegant one is silly enough to try to go to outer space! Dear me.


* Humankind's academic reliance on the nimbler, smaller creatures is well-documented. The ex-ex Mr B is one such, with a PhD, gained after untold months of camping out in Norway, in something relating to trilobites. This amounts almost to unfair patronage, as the trilobites are extinct and therefore can't even win a Nobel Prize. Many times Ms B has been promised that she will have a trilobite named after her - a particularly cute one - but it seems none so far have been quite cute enough.

** I say no direct connection - but there is a very significant indirect connection. After all, these wonderful creatures are called roundworms, which is almost the same as roundheads, except they are worms. As we all know, the Diet of Worms was an assembly not unlike an International Worm Meeting at which discussion centred on "what is to be done about Martin Luther and the reformation?". It was the wonderful precedent of the Worms' protection of Martin Luther that later made John Milton's work possible - and, as many people know, Ms Baroque herself is directly descended from the eminent free-thinking blind poet - a lineage even as great as that of C elegans.