A phenomenological model describing pharyngeal pulsing in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans anesthetized by alcohol.

The recovery process of the suppressed pharyngeal pulsation in the nematode has been investigated for several concentrations of a homologous primary alcohol series (CnH2n-1OH, n = 1,2,3). A mathematical model describing the time course of the recovery process is phenomenologically constructed by using two time constants of delay time tD and recovery time tau. The values of tD and tau are obtained by fitting the equation to experimental data. The obtained values increase with increasing alcohol concentration. To observe the characteristics of tD and tau against the alcohol of order n, the inverse of these time constants are computed at 25 v/v% concentration and plotted on a semi-logarithmic scale. The plot curves decrease non-linearly and are dissimilar to the well-known curves illustrating the importance of lipid solubility in the cell membrane in anesthetic phenomena.