What are Caenorhabditis Elegans?

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INTRODUCTION
Caenorhabditis elegans are nematodes that are feed on Escherichia coli. and live in free-living soil. C. elegans make good model organisms because they are small, they have a short life span, they reproduce quickly and have many offspring, they are easily and inexpensively grown in a laboratory, there is visible phenotypic differentiation between different genotypes, and there is much known about their genome. C. elegans have most major types of differentiated tissue which include; nerve, muscle, hypodermis, intestine, and gonad. C. elegans are also good to use because they can be stored in liquid nitrogen and are still viable.
C. elegans have two genders, hermaphrodite and male. The hermaphrodite has two X chromosomes. It is self-fertilizing, which means it can produce offspring without needing another C. elegans. This is supported by Current Topics in Developmental Biology when they describe the genotype (Ross Wolff & Zarkower, 2008). When the hermaphrodite C. elegans are young they produce and store sperm. When the C. elegans is older, it then produces oocyte. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site, an oocyte is, an egg before it matures (Merriam-Webster). The eggs are fertilized by the sperm and go through some of their development inside the parent hermaphrodite.
C. elegans males are produced rarely in a hermaphrodite population by meiotic non-disjunction at a frequency of 0.1%. Non-disjunction is, according to the Genetics Home Reference, when chromosomes or chromatids fail to separate properly. (Genetics Home Reference) . Males have only one X chromosome. This is supported in the Developmental Biology Journal when it is stated that the hermaphrodites are XX and the males are XO (Morgan, Critte...

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...www.genetics.org/. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .

Morgan, Dyan E., Sarah L. Crittenden, and Judith Kimble. "The C. Elegans Adult Male Germline: Stem Cells and Sexual Dimorphism." Developmental Biology 346.2 (2010): 204-14. Science Direct. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .

"Nondisjunction." Genetics Home Reference. N.p., 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .

"Oocyte." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .

Ross Wolff, Jennifer, and David Zarkower. "Somatic Sexual Differentiation in Caenorhabditis Elegans." Current Topics in Developmental Biology 83 (2008): 1-39. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .

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