Nearly 50 years after Sydney Brenner’s letter to Max Perutz set the wheels in motion for the use of Caenorhabditis elegans as a potent genetic model system, leading eventually to six Nobel prizes and a global research community numbering in the thousands, a new threshold has been crossed.

Starting with the latest release of the C. elegans genome (WS232 in worm-speak), the genetic map is now FROZEN. Recombinational distances have changed very little over the last three years, a testament both to the fine granularity of the genetic map as well as — perhaps — to shifting tides in experimental approaches.

New mutations, deficiencies and rearrangements will still be placed on the map but simply assigned an interpolated genetic position.