Historic Submission — Dr. Scott Emmons is a contributor to the special anniversary issue marking the 350th anniversary of the prestigious Philosophical Transactions, produced by the Royal Society of London. The world’s oldest and longest-running scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions has published countless articles that have revolutionized understanding of the physical and life sciences, including papers by Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and Alan Turing. It also established the concepts of scientific priority and peer review used by all scientific publications today. In his paper, appearing in the March 6, 2015, issue, Dr. Emmons describes how John White and Sydney Brenner established the field of connectomics—mapping the connections of all nerve cells in the roundworm known as C. elegans—described in White’s1986 paper “The Structure of the Nervous System of the Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.” This paper was 1 of 18 selected by the editors as the most significant papers published in the biological sciences over the journal’s history. Dr. Emmons reflects on the paper’s history, its authors, its role in the establishment of wide-ranging C. elegans research and the evolution of connectomics. Dr. Emmons is professor of genetics and of neuroscience, and holds the Siegfried Ullmann Chair in Molecular Genetics. Using C. elegans, his laboratory has made notable contributions concerning connectomics, nervous system development, and behavior.
Posted on: Friday, March 06, 2015