This is a video of a prototype of C.elegans swimming locomotion simulation for the OpenWorm project.

The worm body, including a 1-to-1 mapping of all muscle cells was constructed by Andrey Palyanov, the Sibernetic engine that runs the fluid mechanics of the environment and worm body was developed by Andrey Palyanov and Sergey Khayrulin. The scripting layer that issues muscle contractions was coded by Mike Vella.

Immediate next steps will be plugging muscle cell electrophysiology into the model using spiking models for C. elegans muscle cells optimised by Mike Vella against experimental data, and comparing C. elegans locomotion patterns to experimental recordings.

As if this was not exciting enough we are also progressing towards hooking up the worm simulation in Geppetto. This will allow us not only to run the simulation but also to let people play and interact with it from their browsers.

The ultimate scientific goal of OpenWorm is, obviously, plugging the entire worm brain (302 neurons) into this model to test hypotheses and understand more about how behaviour is generated.

Exciting times ahead!