1. A conserved behavioral role for a nematode interneuron neuropeptide receptor.
- Author
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Chai CM, Chen W, Wong WR, Park H, Cohen SM, Wan X, and Sternberg PW
- Subjects
- Animals, Neuropeptides metabolism, Neuropeptides genetics, Behavior, Animal, Mutation, Interneurons metabolism, Caenorhabditis elegans genetics, Caenorhabditis elegans metabolism, Receptors, Neuropeptide metabolism, Receptors, Neuropeptide genetics, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins metabolism, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins genetics
- Abstract
Neuropeptides are evolutionarily conserved modulators of many aspects of animal behavior and physiology, and expand the repertoire of processes that can be controlled by a limited number of neurons. Deciphering the neuropeptidergic codes that govern distinct processes requires systematic functional analyses of neuropeptides and their cognate receptors. Even in well-studied model organisms like Caenorhabditis elegans, however, such efforts have been precluded by a lack of mutant reagents. Here, we generated and screened 21 C. elegans neuropeptide G-protein coupled receptor mutants with no pre-existing reagents for the touch-evoked escape response, and implicated six receptors expressed in diverse neuron classes representing multiple circuit levels in this behavior. We further characterized the mutant with the most severe phenotype, frpr-14, which was defective in multiple behavioral paradigms. We leveraged this range of phenotypes to reveal that FRPR-14 modulation of different precommand interneuron classes, AVH and AIB, can drive distinct behavioral subsets, demonstrating cellular context-dependent roles for FRPR-14 signaling. We then show that Caenorhabditis briggsae CBR-FRPR-14 modulates an AVH-like interneuron pair to regulate the same behaviors as C. elegans but to a smaller extent. Our results also suggest that differences in touch-evoked escape circuit architecture between closely related species results from changes in neuropeptide receptor expression pattern, as opposed to ligand-receptor pairing. This study provides insights into the principles utilized by a compact, multiplexed nervous system to generate intraspecific behavioral complexity and interspecific variation., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Genetics Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)
- Published
- 2022
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