Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills

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The animal on the cover of Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills is Caenorhabditis elegans, a small nematode worm. Unlike many of its nastier parasitic cousins, C. elegans lives in the soil where it feeds on microbes and bacteria. It grows to about 1 mm in length.

In spite of its status as a "primitive" organism, C. elegans shares with H. sapiens many essential biological characteristics. C. elegans begins life as a single cell that divides and grows to form a multicellular adult. It has a nervous system and a brain (more properly known as the circumpharyngeal ring) and a muscular system that supports locomotion. It exhibits behavior and is capable of rudimentary learning. Like humans, it comes in two sexes, but in C. elegans those sexes consist of a male and a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite. C. elegans is easily grown in large numbers in the laboratory, has a short (2-3 week) lifespan, and can be manipulated in sophisticated experiments. These characteristics make it an ideal organism for scientific research.

The C. elegans hermaphrodite has 959 cells, 300 of which are neurons, and 81 of which are muscle cells. The entire cell lineage has been traced through development. The adult has a number of sensory organs in the head region ...