The death of Sir John Sulston who died on March 6th was sad news for the world of medicine and genetics.
The scientist won the Nobel Prize in physiology, for his decades of work on the genetic make-up of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny nematode worm. This work paved the way to the decoding of the human genome.
In the mushroom world we are familiar with the nematode usage in pest control, and it is amazing that the cellular development of these minute, transparent, 1 millimetre long critters was instrumental in the towering scientific achievement that was the unveiling of the human genome back in 2001.
