Why Only Some?
	Taylor Allen: Still Looking at Worms--with New NSF Grant to Fund His Research on Muscle Function (Main Story)		"Only some worms regain normal muscle function," says Allen, "because the likelihood that a chemical mutagen would cause a mutation in a protein that interacts with troponin I is very, very low in any one animal." Troponin I might interact with three of the 10,000 or so proteins in an animal, he says, and the likelihood that the chemical mutagen would affect one of those three--rather than one of the 9999 other proteins--is slight. "Because we can examine 10,000 to 100,000 worms fairly easily (because worms are prolific breeders, have short generation times, and take up little space in the lab), we stand," Allen says, "a reasonable chance of finding the compensating mutation that might occur with a frequency of one in 10,000 animals."
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