
The Future of Digital Biology - oniridelic
http://www.openworm.org
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oniridelic
The roundworm C. elegans has one of the simplest nervous systems of any
organism, with its hermaphrodite type having only 302 neurons. Furthermore,
the structural connectome of these neurons is fully worked out. There are
fewer than one thousand cells in the whole body of a C. elegans worm, each
with a unique identifier and comprehensive supporting literature because C.
elegans is a model organism. Being a model organism, the genome is fully
known, along with many well characterized mutants readily available, a
comprehensive literature of behavioural studies, etc. With so few neurons and
new calcium 2 photon microscopy techniques it should soon be possible to
record the complete neural activity of a living organism. By manipulating the
neurons through optogenetic techniques, combined with the above recording
capacities the project is in an unprecedented position to be able to fully
characterize the neural dynamics of an entire organism.

