MicrobeWorld

With the help of a tiny worm, Cornelia Bargmann is unpicking the neural circuits that drive eating, socializing and sex. Male sexual dysfunction is never pretty, even in nematodes. In normal roundworm courtship, a slender male will sidle up to a plump hermaphrodite, make contact, and then initiate a set of steps leading up to insemination: a sinuous backwards motion as he searches for the sexual cleft, a pause to probe, and finally the transfer of sperm. The whole business is usually over in a couple of minutes. “It's very slithery, and affectionate,” says Cornelia Bargmann, who has been observing the behaviour of this particular worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, for 25 years.

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