The nematode (worm) Caenorhabditis elegans

was the first multicellular organism to have its genome, or complete DNA sequence, sequenced by human beings. The sequencing project for C. elegans was completed in 19981 and entailed the examination and processing of 19,000 genes, or a total of 97 Mb of data. The task of sequencing the complete genome of an organism is a daunting challenge, one only surpassed by the still greater project of determining the function of each gene. But through the use of reverse genetics on the genome sequence of C. elegans, researchers can systematically determine what the function of each gene is. Reverse genetics involves deducing how a gene works by examining its DNA sequence and deducing the function, or lack thereof, of its mutant counterpart. Eventually biologists will determine the function of each gene in C. elegans. Since many organisms contain similar genes with similar functions, this information can be applied to other organisms which will help make the functional analysis of other genomes easier and faster. To take on the overwhelming task of the functional analysis of the C. elegans genome, the “Gene Knockout Consortium ” was created2. It is currently an international collaboration between three labs whose mandate is to “produce null alleles of all known genes in the C. elegans genome”2, which means they plan to find these null alleles by “knocking out” (rendering inactive) a gene of interest in an attempt to determine its function. The three labs involved in the C. elegans Gene Knockout Consortium include