Introduction to experimental design for undergraduate students using C. elegans as a model for neurodegenerative diseases.

Cost effective, hands-on and interactive practicals are a useful way to introduce undergraduate students to the fundamentals of biomedical research: choose a hypothesis, design experiments, collect data with reproducibility and transparency, and present in a suitable format. Here we report a series of neuroscience practicals using Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans) to investigate therapies for Huntington’s disease. Different drugs were made available to supplement the worm’s diet and the student’s designed locomotion and imaging assays to test the efficiency of the drug as a therapy. Although this teaching practical is focused on neurodegenerative diseases, it can be easily adapted to other fields and we offer ideas to generate other types of sessions suitable to other fields or other age-groups.