Imagine being able to rewrite the instructions in a living organism – just like editing a recipe – to understand how certain genes affect life and health. Scientists often do this using tiny worms called C. elegans, a favourite in research labs because they’re simple, well-understood, and are surprisingly similar to humans at the genetic level. 

Right now, making genetically modified versions of these worms is possible, but it’s slow and usually done one worm line at a time. 

A recent study published in PLOS One and led by Dr Eleanor Warren, a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Karen Sarkisyan’s Synthetic Biology group at the LMS, explores a fresh approach: using bacteria called Agrobacterium to transfer genes into C. elegans. This method that could someday allow scientists to create entire libraries of modified worms at once. 

Here’s what they found: 

• The worms can survive by eating Agrobacterium. 
• They tested different ways to get the bacteria to deliver genes into the worms. 
• While the method isn’t fully working yet, the results are promising and offer a path forward. 

If this technique is refined, it could speed up genetic research, helping scientists better understand how genes influence health, ageing and disease. 

The team also created a toolkit of DNA constructs, which are artificially designed segments of DNA that scientists use to introduce new genetic material into an organism, to help other researchers build on their work.  

It’s still early days, but this approach could one day transform how scientists study genes using one of nature’s tiniest creatures. 

This work was published on 27 May 2025. 

Read the full publication here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0325060