At the Edge

C. elegans is so important because it is the only creature whose neurons – all 302 – have been precisely mapped and labeled. This is basic to the neuro-physiological investigation that Haspel is conducting with a substantial grant from the New Jersey Commission on Spinal Cord Research. The green fluorescent image provided for BioScience is a scan captured during an undergraduate course Haspel teaches, Cell Biology and Imaging, visualizing inhibitory motoneu-rons along the ventral cord. Haspel also created the imaginative image above interpreting the essence of his research. " After all, we're working to find out how key biological components fit together, " he says, " how nature's gears mesh so that C. elegans can move. " Familiarly known to Assistant Professor of Biology Gal Haspel as C. elegans, two images of the minute worm Caenorhabditis elegans comprised the cover of the June 2014 issue of BioScience, which included the article co-authored by Haspel titled " Neurobiology of Caenorhabditis elegans Locomotion: Where Do We Stand? " One millimeter long at most, this tiny nematode is hugely important for increasing biological knowledge that could help humans recover from spinal cord injuries and other neurological damage.