Department of Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China.
Neurosci Res. 2011 Dec;71(4):341-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neures.2011.08.006. Epub 2011 Aug 26.
Ethanol affects the formation of learning and memory in many species. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the behavioral effects of ethanol are still poorly understood. In Caenorhabditis elegans, gustatory plasticity is a simple learning paradigm, in which animals after prolonged pre-exposure to a chemo-attractive salt in the absence of food show chemo-aversion to this salt during subsequent chemotaxis test stage. We characterized the effect of ethanol on this simple learning model. Our results showed that ethanol administration interfered with gustatory plasticity during pre-exposure or test stage in well-fed worms. Genetic analysis revealed that one mutant previously implicated involved in acute ethanol responses, slo-1, as well as two mutants with defects in serotonin synthesis, tph-1 and bas-1, failed to exhibit ethanol interference with gustatory plasticity. Furthermore, two metabotropic serotonin receptors, SER-4 and SER-7, were found to be involved in ethanol-mediated gustatory plasticity. In addition, the tph-1 and ser-4 loci were also involved in ethanol's effect on locomotion behavior. These data suggested an essential role of serotonin signaling in modulating acute effects of ethanol.
乙醇会影响许多物种的学习和记忆形成。然而，乙醇对行为影响的分子机制仍知之甚少。在秀丽隐杆线虫中，味觉可塑性是一种简单的学习模式，在这个模式中，动物在长时间接触有吸引力的盐而没有食物的预暴露后，在随后的趋化性测试阶段会对这种盐表现出厌恶。我们描述了乙醇对这种简单学习模型的影响。我们的结果表明，在饱食的线虫中，乙醇给药会干扰预暴露或测试阶段的味觉可塑性。遗传分析显示，一个先前涉及急性乙醇反应的突变体 slo-1，以及两个在血清素合成中存在缺陷的突变体 tph-1 和 bas-1，都不能表现出乙醇对味觉可塑性的干扰。此外，两种代谢型血清素受体 SER-4 和 SER-7，被发现参与了乙醇介导的味觉可塑性。此外，tph-1 和 ser-4 基因座也参与了乙醇对运动行为的影响。这些数据表明，血清素信号在调节乙醇的急性作用中起着重要作用。
