It’s alive! Artificial worm injected with code, begins to wriggle on its own

The Open Worm is a fairly advanced project that aims to build a lifelike copy of a nematode roundworm entirely out of computer code.

Last week, the researchers working on the project added code to their simulated worm, and it instantly began to wriggle.

The project’s been going for a little over 7 months now, and the goal of it all is to create an entirely exact, entirely virtual copy of the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode, one of the most widely studied creatures on Earth. 

It’s also the first multicelled organism to have its entire genome mapped. 

Why so much time has been poured into creating a virtual model of a worm is due in large part to the large amount of detail that goes into each of the 1,000 cells being modelled on the computer.

It took a lot of effort to make a few muscle segments twitch, and with the newly injected code, the team now has a complete worm to work with.

You see, the code gives the worm’s muscle’s more swaying motion and speed — so much so that it pretty much matches up to its real-life counterpart, which can move around in water at a clip of about 1 mm per second.

In terms of next steps, the virtual copy needs to be plugged into the system so that researchers can create a model of how the worm’s nerve fibers (302 neurons in total) fire off in order to get the muscles twitching, thereby propelling it forward. This will allow the group to test hypotheses and understand more how behavior is generated.

Additionally, the group hopes to make a virtual version of the worm available online, so that those interested in the project can interact with it via their web browser.

Story via: bbc.co.uk