Worms without eyes shouldn’t see colour — yet C. elegans can. In this episode, we dive into a landmark study that shows how worms use blue-to-amber light ratios to make foraging decisions. When exposed to toxic blue pigments like pyocyanin, worms avoid them — but only under white light. The twist? They do it all without opsins.

We explore:

How worms detect and avoid blue-pigment-secreting P. aeruginosa Why light potentiates avoidance, but only for certain spectral ratios How lite-1 and GUR-3 receptors mediate spectral sensitivity Natural variation in colour preference across wild strains The discovery that stress-related genes jkk-1 and lec-3 underlie colour-guided behaviour

This episode uncovers a new form of opsin-free colour vision, expanding our understanding of how simple organisms read complex environments.

📖 Based on the research article: “C. elegans discriminates colors to guide foraging” Dipon Ghosh, Dongyeop Lee, Xin Jin, H. Robert Horvitz & Michael N. Nitabach Published in Science (2021) 🔗 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd3010

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📩 More info: 🔗 ⁠⁠www.veerenchauhan.com⁠⁠ 📧 [email protected]