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Published October 2, 2013 | Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Synaptic polarity of the interneuron circuit controlling C. elegans locomotion

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans is the only animal for which a detailed neural connectivity diagram has been constructed. However, synaptic polarities in this diagram, and thus, circuit functions are largely unknown. Here, we deciphered the likely polarities of seven pre-motor neurons implicated in the control of worm's locomotion, using a combination of experimental and computational tools. We performed single and multiple laser ablations in the locomotor interneuron circuit and recorded times the worms spent in forward and backward locomotion. We constructed a theoretical model of the locomotor circuit and searched its all possible synaptic polarity combinations and sensory input patterns in order to find the best match to the timing data. The optimal solution is when either all or most of the interneurons are inhibitory and forward interneurons receive the strongest input, which suggests that inhibition governs the dynamics of the locomotor interneuron circuit. From the five pre-motor interneurons, only AVB and AVD are equally likely to be excitatory, i.e., they have probably similar number of inhibitory and excitatory connections to distant targets. The method used here has a general character and thus can be also applied to other neural systems consisting of small functional networks.

Additional Information

Ā© 2013 Rakowski, Srinivasan, Sternberg and Karbowski. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Received: 07 May 2013; Accepted: 07 September 2013; Published online: 02 October 2013. We thank Cori Bargmann for comments on the manuscript. The work was supported by the EU grant POIG.02.01.00-14-122/09 "Physics as the basis for new technologieā€”development of modern research infrastructure at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw" (Franciszek Rakowski), by the Marie Curie Actions EU grant FP7-PEOPLE-2007-IRG-210538 (Jan Karbowski), and by the grant from the Polish Ministry of Science and Education NN 518 409238(Jan Karbowski).

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Published - fncom-07-00128.pdf

Supplemental Material - 55552_Karbowski_Presentation1.PDF

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