BEHAVIORAL GENETICS LABORATORY

C. elegans has also been one of the most studied organisms in the world because of its use as a genetic model organism. In our lab we take advantage of these mutants and tools developed over decades and try to understand the complex ecological interaction between C. elegans and its environment, particularly its relationship with bacteria.

OUR LAB USES

the genetic model organism C. elegans to study several questions:

Ecology - How do nematodes interact with their natural environments?
Behavior - How do worms behave to increase their survival and reproductive success in their environments? What are the genes and circuitry that control these behaviors?
Space - How does gravity affect development and behavior of an animal?

Learn basics about C. elegans here or at Wiki.

Learn more about our research here!!

RESEARCH

• C. ELEGANS ECOLOGY


• With the onset of the genomic era, a new opportunity to study ecology at the genetic level is just dawning. In the Lee lab we use C. elegans genetics to study how the worm interacts with its environment and other organisms at the gene level. Our ultimate goal is to understand how nematodes use their genes to gain fitness advantages in nature. We are studying C. elegans ecology at several levels:








• - C. elegans natural environments
  
  In nature C. elegans can be found in places where their favorite food, bacteria, is found in abundance. You’ll especially find them on the ground in rotting fruit and vegetation. We found Caenorhabditis nematodes here in Korea in rotting peaches, pear and yuzu fruit (Choi et al, 2016). However, we would like to learn more about C elegans natural ecology and life history. What are the conditions that allow Caenorhabditis nematodes to grow and reproduce? Can we replicate those conditions in the laboratory? We have developed a protocol to cultivate C. elegans in soil and rotting fruit in the laboratory (Indong et al, 2024).
  
  
  









• - Studying C. elegans in 3-D.
  
  In the lab C. elegans is cultivated on an agar plate with E. coli bacteria, but in nature they live in soil and rotten fruits with diverse bacteria. Thus, the worms’ natural habitat is 3D rather than a flat 2D world as in the lab. We developed a system in our lab to cultivate worms in 3D called NGT-3D to study C. elegans development and behavior in three dimensions (Lee et al, 2016). By using behavioral analysis and video technology we are assessing worm behavior in 3D, and trying to relate these behaviors to reproductive fitness and evolution of the nematodes.
  
  
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• - C. elegans maternal and oviposition behavior
  
  Maternal behaviors are important innate behaviors performed by mothers that increase the survival of its young. C. elegans mothers don’t actively care for their young, but they can control their egg laying. In adverse environments such as in the toxic bacterial metabolite violacein, mothers make the ultimate sacrifice by holding their eggs in their bodies resulting in internal hatching that leads to their own death but survival of the young, termed matriphagy (Yoon et al, 2020).
  
  In the normal laboratory 2D plate culture of C. elegans, hermaphrodite mother worms lay eggs with no pattern. But in a 3D culture of C. elegans, we find that mothers will spread out the bacteria to form a “nest” of bacteria, and the mother worms actively moves away from the bacteria to lay its eggs, which we term 3D oviposition behavior. We identified low oxygen as a cue that induces oviposition behavior, and a neuropeptide and a receptor that regulate the behavior, and find that this behavior gives a fitness advantage for the survival of the young (Lee et al, 2022).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• C. ELEGANS IN SPACE


• Our future may be beyond this planet. However, before we travel throughout the galaxy and colonize other planets, we must understand how environments outside our Earth’s atmosphere are affecting our biology. How do changes in gravity affect our bodies and development? We are currently performing experiments to understand how high or low gravity can affect C. elegans muscle, neuronal development, and innate immunity using molecular biology and microscopy, and we have shown that space microgravity causes muscle atrophy in C. elegans, just as it does in humans (Kim et al, 2023). We are also beginning to assess how low gravity can affect neuron development using an instrument called a clinostat. Our lab has both a 2D clinostat and a 3D clinostat to simulate microgravity conditions. Finally, with an international team of scientists from Europe, USA and East Asia, we have sent C. elegans into space aboard the International Space Station in 2018, 2021 and 2022 to study the effect of space on neuron development, innate immunity and muscle atrophy. For more info on our spaceflight experiments in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), check out the following link: www.mme-spaceworms.com
  
  
  Here’s a Korean news article of our experiment: https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20190411131200017
  
  
  
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• C. ELEGANS ODOR BEHAVIOR


• Worms may seem like simple organisms, but they can sense and remember many things such as cultivation temperature, toxic foods, and smells. In conjunction with Dr. Kyoung-hye Yoon’s lab at Yonsei University Wonju Medical College, we study what odors worms can smell, what factors like age can alter their sense of smell, and are identifying the odor receptors that are responsible for sensing the odors.
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PUBLICATION

PRESENTATION

MEMBERS

Meet the entire team!

AND OUR FORMER STUDENTS

• Nagendran Tharmalingam
  
  Visiting PhD student
  (currently at Mylonakis lab,
  Brown University)
• Jae-im Choi
  
  Masters student
  (currently at Yonsei University
  Wonju Severance Hospital,
  Wonju, Korea)
• Heekyung Lee
  
  Undergraduate
  (currently a Ph.D student at
  Yonsei Wonju Medical College)
• Min-Hoo Shim
  
  Undergraduate
  (currently graduate student at
  Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea)
• Saebom Kwon
  
  Undergraduate
  (currently a Ph.D student at
  Yonsei Wonju Medical College)
• Cheol-Woon Woo
  
  Undergraduate
  (currently graduate student at
  Seoul University)
• Jin-sun Lee
  
  Masters student
  (Currently a MS student at
  Yonsei University Division of
  Biological Science,Wonju, Korea)
• Euisun Pyo
  
  visiting Masters student
  (currently graduate student at
  Seoul University)
• Saraswathi Kalichamy
  
  Ph.D student
• Jin-hwa Jeong
  
  Undergraduate
• Se-young Yoo
  
  Undergraduate
• Hae-su Kim
  
  Undergraduate
• Se-young Park
  
  Undergraduate
• Chan Kim
  
  Undergraduate
• Hwa-jeong Lee
  
  Undergraduate
• Hye-Ju Kim
  
  Undergraduate
• Hyun-Jun Im
  
  Undergraduate
• Ban-seok Kim
  
  Masters student
  (National Cancer Center,
  Ilsan, Korea)
  
• Ki-Ryung Hwang
  
  Undergraduate