Preface/Front Matter

Abstract

In 1965, Sydney Brenner chose the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a promising model animal for a concerted genetic, ultrastructural, and behavioral investigation of development and function in a simple nervous system. Since then, with the help of a growing number of investigators, knowledge about the biology of “the worm,” as it is referred to by Brenner’s intellectual progeny, has accumulated at a steadily accelerating pace, to the extent that C. elegans is now probably the most completely understood metazoan in terms of anatomy, genetics, development, and behavior. There are presently more than 60 laboratories in several parts of the world working on the worm, and the number is growing. A Caenorhabditis Genetics Center has been established at the University of Missouri, Columbia, to maintain and dispense mutant strains and to collate genetic mapping data. A C. elegans newsletter is distributed twice yearly by the Center. The International C. elegans Meeting, held biennially during the past decade at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, now attracts over 300 participants, including an increasing number of researchers from other areas of developmental biology.

The past few years have seen the completion of two major long-term projects that provide new insights into C. elegans development and lay important groundwork for future investigation: completion of the cell lineages of both sexes, from zygote to adult, and description of the complete anatomy at the level of electron microscope resolution, providing a complete “wiring diagram” of cell contacts in the animal. The past 3 years have also brought