The Worm Podcast10 Sep 2025

EPISODE 28: Colour Coded – How Blind Worms See Danger in Blue

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

🎧 Subscribe to the WOrM Podcast for more full-organism surprises in perception, evolution, and behaviour.

This podcast is generated with artificial intelligence and curated by Veeren. If you’d like your publication featured on the show, please get in touch.

📩 More info:

🔗 ⁠⁠www.veerenchauhan.com⁠⁠

📧 veeren.chauhan@nottingham.ac.uk

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