[
1980]
The free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has attracted attention in recent years as an organism for the study of the genetic control of development. This chapter briefly describes the present state of this work. Many of the studies reported on here have not yet been published but have been described in "The Worm Breeder's Gazette", an informal newsletter I edit, and at a C. elegans meeting held at Cold Spring Harbor in May 1979. A previous review of this field was written by Riddle (1978). The use of free-living nematodes in genetic studies was first suggested by Dougherty and Calhoun in 1948. Early studies of C. elegans by Dougherty and co-workers (1959) emphasized methods of axenic cultivation while the sexual cycle was described by Nigon (1949). The present interest in C. elegans, however, was triggered by Sydney Brenner who took up the organism in the late 1960s as a possibly useful organism for the study of the genetic control of the nervous system and of behavior (Brenner, 1973). It was largely due to Brenner (1974) that the present methods of cultivation and of genetic analysis were developed.