Automated detection and analysis of foraging behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans

Huang, Kuang-Man; Cosman, Pamela C.; Schafer, William R.

doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2008.01.027

Cited by 31 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Furthermore, hyperactive twk-7(null) and kin-2(cau1) mutants are characterized by reduced wave amplitudes during spontaneous crawling. In sharp contrast, hyperactive animals with elevated presynaptic acetylcholine release, such as egl-30(gf) and goa-1(lf) (Brundage et al 1996;Lackner et al 1999;Huang et al 2008), or increased postsynaptic acetylcholine receptor sensitivity (Bhattacharya et al 2014) moved with enhanced wave amplitudes. Although Ga q (gf) and Ga 0 (lf) animals are characterized by an increased spontaneous body-bending frequency on plates, these worms executed futile back-and-forth movements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locomotion Behavior Is Affected by the GαS Pathway and the Two-Pore-Domain K+ Channel TWK-7 Interacting in GABAergic Motor Neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans

Gottschling¹,

Döring²,

Lüersen

2017

Genetics

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Adjusting the efficiency of movement in response to environmental cues is an essential integrative characteristic of adaptive locomotion behavior across species. However, the modulatory molecules and the pathways involved are largely unknown. Recently, we demonstrated that in Caenorhabditis elegans, a loss-of-function of the two-pore-domain potassium (K 2 P) channel TWK-7 causes a fast, coordinated, and persistent forward crawling behavior in which five central aspects of stimulated locomotion-velocity, direction, wave parameters, duration, and straightness-are affected. Here, we isolated the reduction-of-function allele cau1 of the C. elegans gene kin-2 in a forward genetic screen and showed that it phenocopies the locomotor activity and locomotion behavior of twk-7(null) animals. Kin-2 encodes the negative regulatory subunit of protein kinase A (KIN-1/PKA). Consistently, we found that other gain-of-function mutants of the Ga S -KIN-1/PKA pathway resemble kin-2(cau1) and twk-7(null) in locomotion phenotype. Using the powerful genetics of the C. elegans system in combination with cell type-specific approaches and detailed locomotion analyses, we identified TWK-7 as a putative downstream target of the Ga S -KIN-1/PKA pathway at the level of the g-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic D-type motor neurons. Due to this epistatic interaction, we suggest that KIN-1/PKA and TWK-7 may share a common pathway that is probably involved in the modulation of both locomotor activity and locomotion behavior during forward crawling.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Locomotion Behavior Is Affected by the GαS Pathway and the Two-Pore-Domain K+ Channel TWK-7 Interacting in GABAergic Motor Neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans

Gottschling¹,

Döring²,

Lüersen

2017

Genetics

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“…Foraging, for example, involves a series of side-to-side movements of the head (Kindt et al, 2007), thus providing a visual cue for the automatic detection and analysis of foraging (Huang et al, 2008). A similar method was deployed to measure the control of egg-laying and turning events by serotonin (Hardaker et al, 2001).…”

Section: Detection and Measurement Of Distinct Behavioursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies for automated analysis of C. elegans locomotion

Buckingham

Sattelle

2008

Invert Neurosci

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Automated analysis of C. elegans behaviour is a rapidly developing field, offering the possibility of behaviour-based, high-throughput drug screens and systematic phenotyping. Standard methods for parameterizing worm shapes and movements are emerging, and progress has been made towards overcoming the difficulties introduced by interactions between worms, as well as worm coiling and omega turning. Current methods have facilitated the identification of subtle phenotypes and the characterisation of roles of neurones in forward locomotion and chemotaxis, as well as the quantitative characterisation of behaviour choice and circadian patterns of activity. Given the speed with which C. elegans has been deployed in genetic screens and chemical screens, it is to be hoped that wormtrackers may eventually provide similar rapidity in assaying behavioural phenotypes. However, considerable progress must be made before this can be accomplished. In the case of genome-wide RNAi screens, for example, the presence in the worm genome of some 19,000 genes means that even the minimal user intervention in an automatic phenotyping system will be very costly. Nonetheless, recent advances have shown that drug actions on large numbers of worms can be tracked, raising hopes that high-throughput behavioural screens may soon be available.

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“…By computing precise quantitative measures of these elements of behavior on large numbers of individuals, statistical comparisons of population samples can be obtained. The populations can be chosen to study the impact of any number of genes or environmental conditions on virtually any aspect of the C. elegans biology, including aging [1], mating [2], foraging [3], egg-laying [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of publications focus on crawling behavior, fewer on swimming behavior. Some methods are intrinsically dedicated to one experimental setup, by requiring either a mechanized plate that can follow a crawling C. elegans [3,[7][8][9][10], or specific imaging modalities: fluorescence microscopy [11] or infrared beams [12]. Even when the setup used to observe crawling motions can easily be used for swimming, it is often not possible to adapt the tracker developed for crawling motions into a tracker for swimming motions [13], as these two behaviors present significantly different characteristics related to image processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking C. elegans swimming for high-throughput phenotyping

Restif

Ibáñez-Ventoso

Driscoll

et al. 2011

2011 IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro

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The model organism C. elegans is widely used for phenotype studies, where the behaviors of large numbers of individuals have to be measured accurately. Swimming motions exhibit unique aspects of their behavior, but are significantly more difficult to track than crawling motions. Filming multiple worms is necessary for high-throughput phenotype experiments, but adds to the complexity of tracking. Here we present a novel method to segment and track multiple swimming worms. Segmentation is done by low-level-vision processing followed by articulated model fitting. Tracking is performed by iteratively adjusting the articulated models to the successive frames. We tested our method on 404 videos and 2020 worms, and report results of 94.1% of worms tracked, which are valid 92.1% of the time. The models we use enable a cheap computation of a variety of measures of behavior. We report a quantitative comparison of three mutants using existing and novel phenotype measures, showing statistically significant differences of behavior.

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Automated detection and analysis of foraging behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans

Cited by 31 publications

References 20 publications

Locomotion Behavior Is Affected by the GαS Pathway and the Two-Pore-Domain K+ Channel TWK-7 Interacting in GABAergic Motor Neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans

Locomotion Behavior Is Affected by the GαS Pathway and the Two-Pore-Domain K+ Channel TWK-7 Interacting in GABAergic Motor Neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans

Strategies for automated analysis of C. elegans locomotion

Tracking C. elegans swimming for high-throughput phenotyping

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