About Us
“Learn behavior, learn from nematodes.”
Individual persons perceive and receive stimuli such as light and pain differently. Behaviors also naturally vary from person to person. Recently, it has become clear that various animals also have individual behavioral differences, which vary depending on the situation, sex, and environment.
How is appropriate behavior induced? In our laboratory, we use a miniature animal, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), which is 1 mm long and has 302 neurons (1/50 millionth of the human brain). C. elegans is such a simple animal, but we know only its “wiring（the connections between neurons）”; we know very little about the “principle.” Our first step is to elucidate the mechanism of behavioral optimization of the miniature circuit of nematodes, which will lead to an understanding of its evolution to insects, vertebrates, and humans.
