November 15, 2010 (Vol. 30, No. 20)
URL:
http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/goldstein/lab/movies.html
Rating:
Strong Points: Large assortment of videos
Weak Points: Some links require you to search among video files to find the one you want
Summary:
Here’s a website that took a page from Hollywood when it comes to advertising its movies. Rather than touting “Academy Award winner So-and-So,” it boasts the “Nobel Prize-winning worm C. elegans.” The entire site is, in fact, dedicated to this small scientific celebrity, showcasing the little critter in a number of time-lapse videos. These videos have been made by members of the worldwide C. elegans research community, and they are organized into the categories of embryos, RNAi screens, larvae and adults, techniques, and 4-D movies. My only complaint about the site is that many of the videos direct you to the original online journal source, at which point you must sift through supplementary figures or unlabeled videos to find the one you want. Overall, though, this is a nice website for C. elegans researchers, as well as anyone who finds him/herself simply star-struck by this award-winning worm.
