| RESEARCH |
Brenner's contributions to genetics include identifying messenger RNA with Francis Crick and Matthew Meselson and, with Crick, figuring out that the genetic code is read in three-letter units. But it was his pioneering work with the soil roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans in the 1960s and '70s that earned him this year's Nobel. A relatively simple multicellular creature, the worm is genetically tractable, easy to grow, and transparent, allowing cell division in the growing worm to be observed with a microscope. Brenner turned C. elegans--a worm that, at the time, had gone relatively unnoticed--into the quintessential model system for studying how genetic changes affect development
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