Figure 1. Chronic but not acute silencing of neurons identifies a degenerate thermosensory behavioral circuit: A)Simplified schematic of the connectivity of sensory neurons and interneurons discussed in this work. Adapted from (Cook et al., 2019; White et al., 1986) (www.wormwiring.org). B) Mean thermotaxis bias of fed and starved wild-type and transgenic animals expressing
unc-103(gf) in AIZ.
unc-103(gf) sequences were expressed using the same sequences and strategy used to drive HisCl1 expression to acutely silence AIZ (Takeishi et al., 2020) (see Tables 1 and 2). Thermotaxis bias was calculated as [(run duration toward colder side-run duration toward warmer side)/total run duration]. C) Mean thermotaxis bias of fed and starved wild-type and transgenic animals expressing
unc-103(gf) (left and center), and recCaspases (right). Regulatory sequences used to drive expression of transgenes in AWC and ASI were: (Left) AWC:
ceh-36del, ASI:
srg-47; (Center) AWC:
odr-1; (Right) AWC:
ceh-36del, ASI:
gpa-4 and
gcy-27 (also see Tables 1 and 2). D) Mean thermotaxis bias of fed and starved animals of the indicated genotypes. Alleles used were
ins-26(
tm1983),
ins-32 (
tm6109), and
ins-35(
ok3297). The
srg-47 promoter was used to drive
unc-103(gf) in ASI. In each graph, a dot represents the thermotaxis bias of a biologically independent assay comprised of 15 animals. Errors are SEM. *, ** and *** indicate different from fed at p<0.05, p<0.01, and p<0.001, respectively (Student's t-test). n.s. not significant.