So I am currently writing a rebuttal letter to a critique who has insisted that, “the worm is an unnecessary detour in medical discovery” and “what is true for the worm is not true for humans”.
So my hope is that I can get some help with good examples of discoveries found first in C.elegans, then later applied in humans.
Thanks
April Rose 
I’m no expert in this but here’s a start 
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/
Not specifically human but I’m pretty sure cell death etc occurs in that species too.
Ant
I did a poster on RPIA/rpia-1 (defects cause leukoencephalopathy in human / unc in C.elegans) a while ago to show that while not all pathways and gene functions are conserved from human to nematode, some are.
The huge amount of data for C.elegans (RNAi / knockouts / expression studies / etc) combined with the ease of experimenting with C.elegans (you don’t need an MRI to see nerve function, and you can try metabolic experiments and RNAi quite easily) make it actually a quite attractive system.
We also marked any orthologeous C.elegans genes for human inherited diseases, to make it even easier. I would really recommend anyone who has to look through lists of human disease candidate genes, from as example association studies, to have a look through any available information, and that especially includes model organisms.
Have a look at wormbook.org that should give you enough reasons (and better described).
Michael
I’m fairly certain that the genetics of vulva development led the way to a detailed understanding of the EGFR/Ras/MAPK pathway.
I’m no expert, either, but here’s another suggestion:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2006/index.html
I’m surprised that any reviewer is still making that argument in 2009. Must be living under a rock somewhere…
-Harold
Just enter into PubMed, “elegans model human disease” and you’ll get tens of review articles, not only specific diseases, but also global reviews, that will help you support your rebuttal letter.
Thank you all for some lovely suggestions.
maybe a little too late to reply here because i have jz found this forum,
but something to add on is that the researcher have found the conserved pathway of innate immune response during the pathogenic infection such as MAPKK, p38 signaling pathway.
of course one wouldn’t fit perfectly onto another as ideal model system, but c. elegans would definitely elucidate a general mechanism for us to understand the complex pathway in mammals etc.
Nice one and really worms are connected to humans as found in some researches and many studies supported it. It is worth mentioning that a worm’s brain has absolutely nothing in common with the human’s brain, as it is made of the so-called ganglion cells , which are positioned along their whole body and form a nervous chain. Additionally, the chain is not situated on the back, as the vertebrates do, but on their belly.
Hopefully the term ‘ignorant’ makes its way into your rebuttal.
“Necessary?” I’m sure elegans was not necessary. Expeditious, though.
Insulin signaling anyone? I hear that made a little impression on our understanding of aging, diabetes, etc…
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