University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty Publications
Title
A conserved neuropeptide system links head and body motor circuits to enable adaptive behavior
UMMS Affiliation
Department of Neurobiology; Alkema Lab; Francis Lab; Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Publication Date
2021-11-12
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins | Behavioral Neurobiology
Abstract
Neuromodulators promote adaptive behaviors that are often complex and involve concerted activity changes across circuits that are often not physically connected. It is not well understood how neuromodulatory systems accomplish these tasks. Here, we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans NLP-12 neuropeptide system shapes responses to food availability by modulating the activity of head and body wall motor neurons through alternate G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) targets, CKR-1 and CKR-2. We show ckr-2 deletion reduces body bend depth during movement under basal conditions. We demonstrate CKR-1 is a functional NLP-12 receptor and define its expression in the nervous system. In contrast to basal locomotion, biased CKR-1 GPCR stimulation of head motor neurons promotes turning during local searching. Deletion of ckr-1 reduces head neuron activity and diminishes turning while specific ckr-1 overexpression or head neuron activation promote turning. Thus, our studies suggest locomotor responses to changing food availability are regulated through conditional NLP-12 stimulation of head or body wall motor circuits.
Keywords
C. elegans, G protein-coupled receptor, cholecystokinin, local search, neural circuits, neuropeptide, neuroscience
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2021, Ramachandran et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
DOI of Published Version
10.7554/eLife.71747
Source
Ramachandran S, Banerjee N, Bhattacharya R, Lemons ML, Florman J, Lambert CM, Touroutine D, Alexander K, Schoofs L, Alkema MJ, Beets I, Francis MM. A conserved neuropeptide system links head and body motor circuits to enable adaptive behavior. Elife. 2021 Nov 12;10:e71747. doi: 10.7554/eLife.71747. PMID: 34766905; PMCID: PMC8626090. Link to article on publisher's site
Related Resources
Journal/Book/Conference Title
eLife
PubMed ID
34766905
Repository Citation
Ramachandran S, Banerjee N, Bhattacharya R, Lemons ML, Florman J, Lambert CM, Touroutine D, Alexander K, Schoofs L, Alkema MJ, Beets I, Francis MM. (2021). A conserved neuropeptide system links head and body motor circuits to enable adaptive behavior. University of Massachusetts Medical School Faculty Publications. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71747. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/faculty_pubs/2122
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.