Dr Jie Liu, Monash University, VIC: "Development of C. elegans Locomotion: Finding Balance in Imbalance"
Speaker:
Dr Jie Liu
Sensory Perception and Ageing Laboratory
Biomedical Discovery Institute, Monash University, VIC
Title: "Development of C. elegans Locomotion: Finding Balance in Imbalance"
Abstract: The nervous system experiences prominent structural changes during development, but how the information is processed within the dynamic structure is not clear. Here, we use C. elegans neuromuscular junction (NMJ) as a model to investigate the excitation-inhibition (E-I) balance between excitatory cholinergic and inhibitory GABAergic signalling during development. Our behavioural analysis finds that C. elegans balanced locomotion is characterized by four fundamental shapes throughout development, although the motor system exhibits unbalanced muscular receptor expressions and synaptic connections between juvenile and adult worms. Further electrophysiological studies discover that cholinergic and GABAergic signals at NMJs exhibit distinctive development rates, and cholinergic NMJs exhibit the same kinetics of ACh release, but slow depression during development. More interestingly, our research with L1 larval presents a novel E-I balance model in which the nonsynaptic cholinergic communication mediates excitatory signals at NMJ, while the synaptic GABAergic communication inhibits muscle cells by inducing chloride efflux. These observations suggest that the motor system of C. elegans uses distinctive mechanisms to maintain the E-I balance during development.
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