Bacterial diet quiets worm genes

From Boston, Mass., at the Genome Sequencing and Analysis conference

It’s a gene-loss, not weight-loss, diet. By feeding genetically engineered bacteria to worms, researchers have developed an easy way to deactivate specific worm genes and study their function.

Biologists frequently choose the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans for their studies, in part because they’ve already identified most, if not all, of the worm’s genes (SN: 12/12/98, p.