-
- Caenorhabditis briggsae (Dougherty and Nigon, 1949), Dougherty,
1955
Ellsworth C. Dougherty first recognized the potential of C.
briggsae, which had been
found by Margaret Briggs in a pile of leaves on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto,
California, in 1944 and used in her MS
studies under the direction of Dr. Arthur C. Giese (Briggs, 1946; Gochnauer,
2004). Briggs studied the lifecycle of what she identified as Rhabditis
sp. in association with bacteria and in various culture media devoid of other
organisms. She showed that the population could not be sustained in the
absence of bacteria or even on dead bacterial cells; living bacteria were a
necessary food source. However, survival of individuals was greater on
some bacteria-free media than others.
Dougherty was alerted to the work of Margaret Briggs by George
Wells Beadle of Stanford University (Gochnauer, 2004). Beadle and his
colleague, Edward Tatum, were two of three Nobel laureates in medicine in 1958.
Their 1941 paper on genetic control of biochemical reactions in the bread mold,
Neurospora, validated the one-gene, one-enzyme hypothesis that became a
cornerstone of biochemical genetics.
Later (1949), Dougherty and Victor Nigon of France described the
nematode used by Briggs as Rhabditis briggsae (Dougherty and Nigon,
1949) which was subsequently placed in the subgenus Caenorhabditis by Osche (1952) and
then raised to generic status by Dougherty (1955).
Margaret Briggs went on to complete a PhD in 1950 at the University of
Wiscosin, Madison under the direction of Dr. Liz McCoy. Later, she worked
at Woods Hole, married and became Margaret Briggs Gochnauer (Gochnauer, 2004).
Her PhD research was on responses of R. briggsae to antibiotics (Gochnauer
and McCoy, 1954) .
The name of the nematode is a blend of Greek
and Latin (Caeno, recent; rhabditis, rod-like; briggsae: after
Margaret Briggs who found the nematode.).