Concerted pulsatile and graded neural dynamics enables efficient chemotaxis in C. elegans

Nature Communications
Eyal ItskovitsAlon Zaslaver

Abstract

The ability of animals to effectively locate and navigate toward food sources is central for survival. Here, using C. elegans nematodes, we reveal the neural mechanism underlying efficient navigation in chemical gradients. This mechanism relies on the activity of two types of chemosensory neurons: one (AWA) coding gradients via stochastic pulsatile dynamics, and the second (AWCON) coding the gradients deterministically in a graded manner. The pulsatile dynamics of the AWA neuron adapts to the magnitude of the gradient derivative, allowing animals to take trajectories better oriented toward the target. The robust response of AWCON to negative derivatives promotes immediate turns, thus alleviating the costs incurred by erroneous turns dictated by the AWA neuron. This mechanism empowers an efficient navigation strategy that outperforms the classical biased-random walk strategy. This general mechanism thus may be applicable to other sensory modalities for efficient gradient-based navigation.

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Citations

Aug 23, 2019·BioEssays : News and Reviews in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology·Samantha Hughes, Tansu Celikel
Mar 4, 2020·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Muneki IkedaIkue Mori
Nov 26, 2019·Neuron·Sagi Levy, Cornelia I Bargmann
Mar 12, 2021·Genetics·Denise M FerkeyNoelle D L'Etoile
Apr 6, 2021·Genes to Cells : Devoted to Molecular & Cellular Mechanisms·Takahiro HinoManabi Fujiwara
May 6, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Benedikt HartlAndreas Zöttl

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
transgenic
fluorescence imaging

Software Mentioned

MATLAB scripts
MATLAB
Multi Animal Tracker
FreelyMovingNeuronTracker
AWA
Micromanager
AWAL
AWAR

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