Regarding worms, neurons, and Ciencia Puerto Rico

Giovanna Guerrero-Medina's picture
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The nervous system of the C. elegans nematode

Our own Daniel Colón Ramos, founder of CienciaPR and member of our administrative team was recently interviewed for the podcast "Science Friday en Español."

During the interview he tells us why he is passionate about the study of the brain and why he chose to focus on the terrestrial nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to understand how neurons are connected leading in order to allow complex behaviors. As Daniel mentions in the podcast, the fact that all of this microscopic worm's neurons are known allows research studies where a cell or gene is disturbed and the subsequent effect on the phenotype (an observable characteristic or behavior) is evaluated. In this way scientists are able to "reverse engineer" how the nervous system works.

Daniel's interview on Science Friday podcast in Spanish is here and starts at minute 22.10 (although we recommend you listen to the entire podcast!).

The complete, unedited interview of Daniel is here. At the end Daniel talks about what motivated him to start CienciaPR and how he developed the first version of this online community.

We thank Science Friday en Español for their excellent podcast and for providing information about recent scientific discoveries and Hispanic scientists to the Spanish-speaking community. If interested, you can access past podcasts on the Science Friday en Español web page or subscribe to them on iTunes.

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