Nature Neuroscience
- 9, 1499 - 1505 (2006)
Published online: 5 November 2006; | doi:10.1038/nn1796
A diacylglycerol kinase modulates long-term thermotactic behavioral plasticity in C. elegansDavid Biron1, 2, Mayumi Shibuya2, Christopher Gabel1, Sara M Wasserman2, Damon A Clark1, Adam Brown2, 3, Piali Sengupta2 & Aravinthan D T Samuel11
Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. 2
Department of Biology and National Center for Behavioral Genomics, 415 South Street, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02454, USA. 3
Present address: Broad Institute, 320 Charles Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02141, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Piali Sengupta sengupta@brandeis.edu or Aravinthan D T Samuel samuel@physics.harvard.edu A memory of prior thermal experience governs Caenorhabditis elegans thermotactic behavior. On a spatial thermal gradient, C. elegans tracks isotherms near a remembered temperature we call the thermotactic set-point (T
S). The T
S corresponds to the previous cultivation temperature and can be reset by sustained exposure to a new temperature. The mechanisms underlying this behavioral plasticity are unknown, partly because sensory and experience-dependent components of thermotactic behavior have been difficult to separate. Using newly developed quantitative behavioral analyses, we demonstrate that the T
S represents a weighted average of a worm's temperature history. We identify the DGK-3 diacylglycerol kinase as a thermal memory molecule that regulates the rate of T
S resetting by modulating the temperature range of synaptic output, but not temperature sensitivity, of the AFD thermosensory neurons. These results provide the first mechanistic insight into the basis of experience-dependent plasticity in this complex behavior.
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