Eminent and Elegant

This month, Nobel-prize winning biologist Sydney Brenner died, aged 92. He’s remembered for pioneering the study of a tiny nematode worm, called Caenorhabditis elegans, as a tool to learn more about the biology and development of living organisms. Brenner chose this worm during the 1960s because it offered insights into complex biological processes, while being simple enough to study in-depth. His work on C.elegans initiated a new field of research and was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with the late John Sulston, one of his first students, and with Robert Horvitz, a geneticist working in his laboratory. Brenner is also known for co-discovering messenger RNA molecules, which transport copies of our DNA from its safe house – the nucleus – to the factory-like sites in the cytoplasm that produce proteins. Brenner was a driving force in molecular biology and today nematode worms are common place in laboratories world-wide.

Written by Deborah Oakley

Deborah Oakley

Writer

Deborah is researching healthy cognitive ageing at the University of Cambridge. She previously worked as a science communicator in London, working closely with the BPoD team.

• Image from Universitat Pompeu Fabra on Flickr
• Image originally published on Flickr with a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence