The quest for action potentials in C. elegans neurons hits a plateau

Lockery, Shawn R.; Goodman, Miriam B.

doi:10.1038/nn0409-377

Cited by 75 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The absence of action potentials may be due to the very high membrane resistance. Indeed, many neurons are essentially isopotential; changes in voltage are experienced virtually instantaneously by the entire cell , so action potentials may not be necessary (Lockery and Goodman 2009). Neurons express a wide variety of ion channels (Hobert 2013), including an unexpectedly large number of genes encoding potassium channels (Salkoff et al 2005).…”

Section: Muscles-controlling Animal Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Transparent window into biology: A primer on Caenorhabditis elegans

2015

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A little over 50 years ago, Sydney Brenner had the foresight to develop the nematode (round worm) Caenorhabditis elegans as a genetic model for understanding questions of developmental biology and neurobiology. Over time, research on C. elegans has expanded to explore a wealth of diverse areas in modern biology including studies of the basic functions and interactions of eukaryotic cells, host-parasite interactions, and evolution. C. elegans has also become an important organism in which to study processes that go awry in human diseases. This primer introduces the organism and the many features that make it an outstanding experimental system, including its small size, rapid life cycle, transparency, and well-annotated genome. We survey the basic anatomical features, common technical approaches, and important discoveries in C. elegans research. Key to studying C. elegans has been the ability to address biological problems genetically, using both forward and reverse genetics, both at the level of the entire organism and at the level of the single, identified cell. These possibilities make C. elegans useful not only in research laboratories, but also in the classroom where it can be used to excite students who actually can see what is happening inside live cells and tissues.KEYWORDS C. elegans; nematodes; Primer; single-cell analysis; transparent genetic system

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Section: Muscles-controlling Animal Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Transparent window into biology: A primer on Caenorhabditis elegans

2015

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“…Consequently, individual neurons can often be modeled as single electrical compartments. Consistent with their electrical compactness, and the absence of voltage gated sodium channels in the C. elegans genome [14], most C. elegans neurons probably do not fire classical, sodium-dependent action potentials [11,15] and synaptic transmission between C. elegans neurons is likely to be graded [16]. Thus, the widely-used formalism of real-time recurrent neural networks [17], which is formally equivalent to networks of single compartment neurons with graded synaptic input-output functions, is a better approximation of network-level function in C. elegans than in most other systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The computational worm: spatial orientation and its neuronal basis in C. elegans

Lockery¹

2011

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

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Spatial orientation behaviors in animals are fundamental for survival but poorly understood at the neuronal level. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans orients to wide range of stimuli and has a numerically small and well-described nervous system making it advantageous for investigation the mechanisms of spatial orientation. Recent work by the C. elegans research community has identified essential computational elements of the neural circuits underlying two orientation strategies that operate in five different sensory modalities. Analysis of these circuits reveals novel motifs including simple circuits for computing temporal derivatives of sensory input and for integrating sensory input with behavioral state to generate adaptive behavior. These motifs constitute hypotheses concerning the identity and functionality of circuits controlling spatial orientation in higher organisms.

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“…Many neurons in the network are nearly isopotential [46, 47], and it is a common and reasonable simplification to model neurons via single-compartment membrane equations, with membrane voltages as the state variables for each neuron. Given this, Wicks et al constructed a single-compartment membrane model for neuron dynamics [48], which we later extended to incorporate connection data for the full somatic connectome [39].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functionality and Robustness of Injured Connectomic Dynamics in C. elegans: Linking Behavioral Deficits to Neural Circuit Damage

2017

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Using a model for the dynamics of the full somatic nervous system of the nematode C. elegans, we address how biological network architectures and their functionality are degraded in the presence of focal axonal swellings (FAS) arising from neurodegenerative disease and/or traumatic brain injury. Using biophysically measured FAS distributions and swelling sizes, we are able to simulate the effects of injuries on the neural dynamics of C. elegans, showing how damaging the network degrades its low-dimensional dynamical responses. We visualize these injured neural dynamics by mapping them onto the worm’s low-dimensional postures, i.e. eigenworm modes. We show that a diversity of functional deficits arise from the same level of injury on a connectomic network. Functional deficits are quantified using a statistical shape analysis, a procrustes analysis, for deformations of the limit cycles that characterize key behaviors such as forward crawling. This procrustes metric carries information on the functional outcome of injuries in the model. Furthermore, we apply classification trees to relate injury structure to the behavioral outcome. This makes testable predictions for the structure of an injury given a defined functional deficit. More critically, this study demonstrates the potential role of computational simulation studies in understanding how neuronal networks process biological signals, and how this processing is impacted by network injury.

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The quest for action potentials in C. elegans neurons hits a plateau

Cited by 75 publications

References 39 publications

A Transparent window into biology: A primer on Caenorhabditis elegans

A Transparent window into biology: A primer on Caenorhabditis elegans

The computational worm: spatial orientation and its neuronal basis in C. elegans

Functionality and Robustness of Injured Connectomic Dynamics in C. elegans: Linking Behavioral Deficits to Neural Circuit Damage

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