Molecular, cellular, and circuit analysis of C. elegans spitting behavior

To identify the neural and molecular substrates of animal behavior and understand the principles by which they function is a major goal in neurobiology. One simple system for such behavioral studies is the pharynx of the nematode worm C. elegans, which contracts rhythmically (pumps) to ingest food. The connectivity (connectome) of the 20 pharyngeal neurons has been completely determined, making the pharynx one of the anatomically simplest and best-defined neuromuscular systems known to science. Previous work showed that ultraviolet (UV) light interrupts and modulates the pharyngeal pumping rhythm. This modulation requires the gustatory receptor orthologs lite-1 and gur-3. Because lite-1 and gur-3 control a similar pharyngeal response to hydrogen peroxide, the pharyngeal response to light was proposed to be a gustatory response to noxious chemical products of photooxidation (Bhatla and Horvitz, 2015).

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Sando, Steven R.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• H. Robert Horvitz.

• Biology.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127711

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127711