School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2468:339-356. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2181-3_19.
The nematode C. elegans has been used widely to study the genetic and cellular basis of behavior. Yet the laboratory conditions under which it is typically studied offer only a narrow glimpse into the richness of natural behaviors this remarkable animal evolved over 500 million years of evolution. For example, burrowing behavior naturally occurs in the wild, but it remains understudied. Our group studies burrowing in an attempt to expand our understanding of the natural behavioral repertoire of C. elegans. Aside from being an interesting and tractable behavior, burrowing is experimentally useful and permits the titration of the muscular output exerted by C. elegans. Here we describe several burrowing assays that allow the modulation of muscular exertion. We used these to study both adaptive and pathological muscular processes such as muscle hypertrophy and dystrophy, respectively. We believe these assays will be of use for researchers studying the production of locomotion under normal and disease-challenged conditions.
秀丽隐杆线虫已被广泛用于研究行为的遗传和细胞基础。然而，通常用于研究它的实验室条件，只能让我们对这种经过 5 亿多年进化而产生的非凡动物的丰富自然行为有一个狭隘的了解。例如，在野外，挖掘行为是自然发生的，但它仍然研究不足。我们的小组研究挖掘行为，试图扩大我们对秀丽隐杆线虫自然行为范围的理解。除了是一种有趣且易于研究的行为之外，挖掘行为在实验上也很有用，可以控制秀丽隐杆线虫施加的肌肉输出。在这里，我们描述了几种允许调节肌肉用力的挖掘测定法。我们使用这些方法分别研究了适应性和病理性肌肉过程，如肌肉肥大和肌肉萎缩。我们相信这些测定法将对研究在正常和疾病挑战条件下运动产生的研究人员有用。
