Title
A Conserved Neuropeptide System Links Head and Body Motor Circuits to Enable Adaptive Behavior
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Published In
eLife
Keywords
C. elegans, G protein-coupled receptor, cholecystokinin, local search, neural circuits, neuropeptide, neuroscience
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.
DOI
10.7554/eLife.71747
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
© 2021, Ramachandran et al.
Recommended Citation
Ramachandran, S.; Banerjee, N.; Bhattacharya, R.; Lemons, M. L. ; Florman, J.; Lambert, C. M. ; Touroutine, D.; Alexander, K.; Schoofs, L.; Alkema, M. J. ; Beets, I.; and Francis, M. M. (2021). A Conserved Neuropeptide System Links Head and Body Motor Circuits to Enable Adaptive Behavior. eLife 10: e71747. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71747