A robotic system for automated genetic manipulation and analysis of .

The nematode is one of the most widely studied organisms in biology due to its small size, rapid life cycle, and manipulable genetics. Research with depends on labor-intensive and time-consuming manual procedures, imposing a major bottleneck for many studies, especially for those involving large numbers of animals. Here, we describe a general-purpose tool, WormPicker, a robotic system capable of performing complex genetic manipulations and other tasks by imaging, phenotyping, and transferring on standard agar media.

Thermal laser ablation with tunable lesion size reveals multiple origins of seizure-like convulsions in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Laser microsurgery has long been an important means of assessing the functions of specific cells and tissues. Most laser ablation systems use short, highly focused laser pulses to create plasma-mediated lesions with dimensions on the order of the wavelength of light. While the small size of the lesion enables ablation with high spatial resolution, it also makes it difficult to ablate larger structures.

Distributed rhythm generators underlie forward locomotion.

Coordinated rhythmic movements are ubiquitous in animal behavior. In many organisms, chains of neural oscillators underlie the generation of these rhythms. In , locomotor wave generation has been poorly understood; in particular, it is unclear where in the circuit rhythms are generated, and whether there exists more than one such generator.