Exploring biological networks – the C. Elegans neural network dataset

C. Elegans, which is short for Caenorhabditis Elegans, is a free-living roundworm that lives in soil environments. Since 1960s, this organism has been widely studied by scientists because of the fact that it is the simplest organism with a nervous system. In this recipe, we will explore the neuron network of C. Elegans and study one of the most common types of networks called the small-world network; these are very often found in the world around us.

Getting ready

To get started with this recipe, download and unzip the C. Elegans neural network data from http://gephi.org/datasets/celegans.gexf.zip.

How to do it…

To explore the C. Elegans neural network data and investigate its interesting properties, follow these steps:

1. Open Gephi. Click on File in the menu bar and then Open in the drop-down menu.
2. In the Open dialog window, navigate to the folder where you unzipped the C. Elegans dataset and click on the celegans...