Abstract

Following the spectacular success of molecular genetics in deciphering the genetic code in the 1960s, several of its leading practitioners felt sufficiently emboldened to use their newly acquired skills to move on and study that most enigmatic of biological organs – the brain. Sydney Brenner’s approach was to focus on Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode that is genetically tractable, has a nervous system that generates a rich repertoire of behaviours yet is small enough to allow anatomical reconstructions with ultrastructural precision. Through force of personality and some inspired pioneering studies, Brenner managed to ignite a bonfire of enthusiasm for this organism, which has resulted in its nervous system becoming the best understood of that in any organism. Initially, many were skeptical that this rather strange structure with just a few hundred neurons would yield insights that were relevant to vertebrate nervous systems. However, fifty years on we know that the basic repertoire of molecular components of worm and human nervous systems are remarkably similar. Furthermore, worms have a similar diversity of these components rather than a primitive sub-set. It appears that the fundamental difference in a vertebrate nervous system is a huge expansion of the neural units that comprise a basic brain such as that exemplified in C. elegans.

摘要

在1960年代分子遗传学在破译遗传密码方面取得了令人瞩目的成功之后，其几位领先的从业者感到足够大胆，可以利用他们新获得的技能来继续研究最神秘的生物器官-大脑。Sydney Brenner的方法是专注于秀丽隐杆线虫线虫具有遗传易处理性，其神经系统可产生丰富的行为，但又足够小，可以进行超精细结构的解剖重建。通过人格力量和一些开创性的开创性研究，布伦纳设法点燃了对该生物体的热情篝火，这导致其神经系统成为任何生物体中最能被理解的。最初，许多人怀疑这种只有几百个神经元的奇怪结构会产生与脊椎动物神经系统有关的见解。然而，五十年来，我们知道蠕虫和人类神经系统的分子组成的基本组成非常相似。此外，蠕虫具有类似的多样性，而不是原始的子集。秀丽隐杆线虫。