title: The early bird catches the worm: new technologies for the Caenorhabditis elegans toolkit.
abstract: The inherent simplicity of Caenorhabditis elegans and its extensive genetic toolkit make it ideal for studying complex biological processes. Recent developments further increase the usefulness of the worm, including new methods for: altering gene expression, altering physiology using optogenetics, manipulating large numbers of worms, automating laborious processes and processing high-resolution images. These developments both enhance the worm as a model for studying processes such as development and ageing and make it an attractive model in areas such as neurobiology and behaviour.
authors.affiliation: Cancer Biology Program and Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Stuart K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics*; D019070:Cell Lineage; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D015870:Gene Expression; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D044085:Microfluidics; D023421:Models, Animal; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data