Wired for insight—recent advances in Caenorhabditis elegans neural circuits

Abstract

The completion of C. elegans connectomics four decades ago has long guided mechanistic investigation of neuronal circuits. Recent technological advance in microscopy and computation programs have aided re-examination of this connectomics, expanding our knowledge by both uncovering previously unreported synaptic connections and also generating models for neural network underlying behaviors. Combining information from single cell transcriptome with elegant tools for cell-specific manipulation has greatly enhanced the ability to precisely investigate individual neurons in behaving animals. This mini-review aims to provide an overview of new information on connectomics and progress towards a molecular atlas of C. elegans nervous system, and discuss emerging findings on neuronal circuits.

Application of Caenorhabditis elegans in the evaluation of food nutrition: A review

“…C. elegans was a multicellular invertebrate that has a body length of about 1 mm and lives in the soil for a long time (Braeckman et al, 2001; Byrd & Jin, 2021). They usually sustained life with edible bacteria and were not harmful to the natural environment and human body (Fueser et al, 2021).…”

Connecting the dots in ethology: applying network theory to understand neural and animal collectives

“…A 'connectome' is an extensive anatomical reconstruction of neural connections-typically through semi-automated segmentation of serial section electron microscopy data (Figure 2, le ). The first connectome was obtained for the hermaphrodite sex of the worm C. elegans, a resource that now includes nearly the complete nervous systems of both sexes (hermaphrodite and male) across development [19]. Similar reconstruction e orts are underway for the Drosophila central brain [20], central complex [21], olfactory system [22], and motor circuits in the ventral nerve cord [23].…”

“…This may be accurate on the timescale of animal behaviors, except when learning and plasticity occur. Edges are typically unweighted (i.e., having unit weight), but anatomical features of axons like their diameters have sometimes been used as a proxy for edge weights [19]. This classical network model may be limiting when the heterogeneity of synaptic interactions plays an important role in network dynamics.…”