Figure 1. Loss of mechanoreceptor
pezo-1 alters the crawling behavior of C. elegans:A) Table showing Wormseq transcriptomic data for all known mechanoreceptors with expression in body wall muscles.
pezo-1 is the mechanoreceptor with the greatest expression in adult C. elegans. B) The mechanoreceptor
pezo-1 in C. elegans is comprised of a dozen isoforms. Diagram (adapted from Hughes et al., 2021) showing the alignment between different
pezo-1 isoforms. Red bars identify the CRISPR-introduced mutations for the strains used in this study. COP1367 impairs the production of long
pezo-1 isoforms expressed in body wall musculature. AG405 is characterized by a long deletion in the shared C-terminus of the gene which results in a null mutant for all
pezo-1 isoforms. C) Filming setup incorporating an infrared camera and infrared LED light source. D) Example data analysis from the behavioral tracking software TIERPSY, showing the tracking of multiple worms in exquisite detail. E) Comparison of mean animal length between wild-type worms (N2) and
pezo-1 knock-out mutants. F) Comparison of mean animal speed of wild-type worms and
pezo-1 mutants. G) Second eigen worm coefficient for wildtype and
pezo-1 mutants. H) Average absolute head amplitude for crawling wildtype and
pezo-1 mutant worms. I) Average absolute tail amplitude for crawling wildtype and
pezo-1 mutant worms. J) Average head (and tail: K) speed for crawling wildtype and
pezo-1 mutant worms.