Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23298, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, Inha University, Incheon, 22212, South Korea.
Sci Rep. 2018 May 2;8(1):6918. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-24943-6.
Appropriate decision-making is essential for ensuring survival; one such decision is whether to eat. Overall metabolic state and the safety of food are the two factors we examined using C. elegans to ask whether the metabolic state regulates neuronal activities and corresponding feeding behavior. We monitored the activity of sensory neurons that are activated by nutritious (or appetitive) stimuli (ASI) and aversive stimuli (ASH) in starved vs. well-fed worms during stimuli presentation. Starvation reduces ASH activity to aversive stimuli while increasing ASI activity to nutritious stimuli, showing the responsiveness of each neuron is modulated by overall metabolic state. When we monitored satiety quiescence behavior that reflects the overall metabolic state, ablation of ASI and ASH produce the opposite behavior, showing the two neurons interact to control the decision to eat or not. This circuit provides a simple approach to how neurons handle sensory conflict and reach a decision that is translated to behavior.
适当的决策对于确保生存至关重要；其中一个决策是是否进食。我们使用秀丽隐杆线虫来研究整体代谢状态和食物安全性这两个因素，以探究代谢状态是否调节神经元活动和相应的进食行为。我们监测了饥饿和饱食状态下线虫对营养刺激（或食欲刺激）（ASI）和厌恶刺激（ASH）的感觉神经元的活性。饥饿会降低对厌恶刺激的 ASH 活性，同时增加对营养刺激的 ASI 活性，表明每个神经元的反应性受到整体代谢状态的调节。当我们监测反映整体代谢状态的饱食静止行为时，ASI 和 ASH 的消融产生了相反的行为，表明这两个神经元相互作用以控制是否进食的决定。这个电路提供了一种简单的方法来了解神经元如何处理感觉冲突并做出转化为行为的决策。
