Caenorhabditis elegans as a powerful tool in natural product bioactivity research

Applied Biological Chemistry

Table 1 Comparison of commonly used animal models

	Human cell culture	Caenorhabditis elegans	Drosophila melanogaster	Danio rerio	Mus musculus	References
Lifespan	N/A	18–20 days	60–80 days	3–5 years	3–4 years	[12, 142,143,144]
Life cycle	N/A	2.5–4 days	~ 10 days	~ 90 days	6–8 weeks	[12, 142, 144, 145]
Reproduction	N/A	140 eggs/day	100 eggs/day	200 eggs/week	5–8 pups/month	[142, 144, 146, 147]
Adult size	N/A	~ 1.0 mm	~ 3.0 mm	2.0–5.0 cm	7.5–10.0 cm	[12, 142, 148, 149]
Number of neurons	N/A	302	~ 100,000	~ 10 millions	~ 70 millions	[150,151,152,153]
Percentage of human genes with orthologs^a	100%	38.1%	40.3%	55.2%	80.5%	[3]
Percentage of human disease genes with orthologs^b	100%	48.6%	53.4%	72.9%	97.0%	[3]
High-throughput screening	+ +	+ +	+	+	–
Ethical issue	+ +	+ +	+ +	+	–

N/A not applicable, + + good, + partly suitable, – not good
^aCalculated as the total number of human genes with orthologs present in animals divided by the total number of genes in humans
^bCalculated as the total number of human disease genes with orthologs present in animals divided by the total number of genes in humans