A continuous research for knowledge
Scientific research is pushing every single day towards a better and deeper knowledge. Either for curiosity, advancing the frontier of what humans know, or for finding a cure for cancer, every day many scientific publications appear on the most exotic journals around the world.
But how much can we know? Is there a limit to what can be achieved in our minds or in our labs? I want to give you a clear example of how much our knowledge can be expanded and has been expanding.
The curious case of C. elegans, a model organism
In biological research, the use of model organisms is very common. Some are using primates, some mice and some others are using yeast cells, everybody hoping to find something from these organisms that can be extrapolated to us or to a more general rule of the natural world.
What you might not know is a pretty popular model organism called Caenorhabditis elegans. This little guy is a very simple almost transparent nematode. Yes, it is a worm; and in years of study, it allowed us to get countless insights on developmental biology, genetics, cell biology and much more, including between others, the most notable RNA interference, and apoptosis discoveries.
Why do I want to talk about a worm that you can find in your back garden that is used in labs all over the world? Well because we know a lot about this guy. And I mean it, a lot.
The boundaries of knowledge
For example, when you think you know yourself, what do you actually think you know? You know your personality? You know your defects? You even know every single mole on your skin! Well, let me tell you: as much as we have more to discover in C. elegans we know every single cell of it!! Exactly! Everysinglecell!
Ok, but what does it mean? Well, you know that we all originate from a single cell that in our case gets originated from an act of fecundation right? For this worm, everything is the same with the difference that it can reproduce asexually as well. So to get all of our cells from that single original cell, you might imagine there is a lot of work to be done.
It turns out that C. elegans has up to 1031 cells in adult males (but is normally 959 in adult hermaphrodites). I am not saying random numbers, we mean that adults have ALWAYS that number of cells in their body if they are not affected by some genetic condition or illness. We not only know how many cells they have but what exactly every single one of those cells does and where it goes in the body. We were able to identify and track every single cell of an adult worm all the way back to its original cell! If that doesn’t sound amazing and utterly outstanding at first check the image of the left!
What you see in this graph is every cell division that occurs from a single cell, the embryo, to the final adult organism. From left to right you can see how every branching in the tree doubles the quantities of cells. Every cluster of cells represents a different functional department of the tissues formed by these cells.
This is crazy impressive. From the starting embryo, we can track down every single cell in that organism!! Okay, it doesn’t have that many cells but still, this is mind blowing!
It gets even better
You didn’t get enough? In this website, you can find the whole connectome mapped in this organism. What does that mean? In simple words, we know every single neuronal connection in the whole nervous system in this worm! In practice, we know which cell (neuron) connects to every other cell in the whole body!!
This is really impressive, and if you thought you knew something about an organism, well think twice, because you will never know as much as I just told you. While you think about this immensity, let me tell you another story…
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