Advances in the Caenorhabditis elegans genome project

Caenorhabditis elegans, a small free-living nematode worm, has been a particularlyuseful model organism for studying the genetics, behavior, and development of metazoan. The97Mb genomic sequence of C. elegans has been finished in 1998, more than 19 000 predicted geneshave been identified. This article reviews the progress in C. elegans genome research so far andthe influence of the project on life science.