A team of biologists and engineers at CU Boulder recently led an exercise class for tiny worms—and their findings could one day help doctors treat humans with Parkinson’s disease and similar illnesses.
The study dives into the incredibly small world of Caenorhabditis elegans. These swimming nematode worms measure just 1 millimeter long. They have only 302 neurons, or nervous system cells, compared to the billions in a human brain, said Ding Xue, co-author of the new research and professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology (MCDB). But the neurons they do have work a lot like our own.
“C. elegans is probably the smallest animal that has all of the important cellular pathways that you find in humans,” Xue said.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2023-02-gym-on-a-chip-worms-parkinson-treatments.html
