I did a search on "elegans" in the Fred Hutch faculty directory - you can see the principal researchers that are using this worm as a model to study cancer, metabolism, and development.

Hits include Roth, Van Gilst, and Buck.

I met Dr. Gilst last night at a Fred Hutch Lab Crawl. He's using C. elegans as a model for how organizisms metabolize and use fat. I was especially impressed that they had discovered significant differences in how C. elegans uses fat in different phases of it's life; as the worm ages, fat is used less in the maintenance of cell membrane tissue, and more is put into fat storage.

We also had an interesting conversation about how fasting triggers a strong response to use fat reserves, whereas caoloric restriction may not. In C. elegans - for each day they "starve" a worm, it's life span increases by a day (to a limit of 50% it's normal like span).

If extended to humans, you might conclude that we should eat every other day if we wanted to live longer...