An asymmetric mechanical code ciphers curvature-dependent proprioceptor activity

Autor: Montserrat Porta-de-la-Riva, Ravi K. Das, Neus Sanfeliu-Cerdan, Nawaphat Malaiwong, Frederic Català-Castro, Li-Chun Lin, Michael Krieg, Aleksandra Pidde
Jazyk: angličtina
Předmět:
Zdroj: Science Advances
science advances
ISSN: 2375-2548
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg4617
Popis: Description
Functional compartmentalization of sensory axons by mechanical compression and extension tunes neuronal activity in C. elegans.
A repetitive gait cycle is an archetypical component within the behavioral repertoire of many animals including humans. It originates from mechanical feedback within proprioceptors to adjust the motor program during locomotion and thus leads to a periodic orbit in a low-dimensional space. Here, we investigate the mechanics, molecules, and neurons responsible for proprioception in Caenorhabditis elegans to gain insight into how mechanosensation shapes the orbital trajectory to a well-defined limit cycle. We used genome editing, force spectroscopy, and multiscale modeling and found that alternating tension and compression with the spectrin network of a single proprioceptor encodes body posture and informs TRP-4/NOMPC and TWK-16/TREK2 homologs of mechanosensitive ion channels during locomotion. In contrast to a widely accepted model of proprioceptive “stretch” reception, we found that proprioceptors activated locally under compressive stresses in-vivo and in-vitro and propose that this property leads to compartmentalized activity within long axons delimited by curvature-dependent mechanical stresses.
Databáze: OpenAIRE