de Bono M, Bargmann C I
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Anatomy, The University of California, San Francisco 94143-0452, USA.
Cell. 1998 Sep 4;94(5):679-89. doi: 10.1016/s0092-8674(00)81609-8.
Natural isolates of C. elegans exhibit either solitary or social feeding behavior. Solitary foragers move slowly on a bacterial lawn and disperse across it, while social foragers move rapidly on bacteria and aggregate together. A loss-of-function mutation in the npr-1 gene, which encodes a predicted G protein-coupled receptor similar to neuropeptide Y receptors, causes a solitary strain to take on social behavior. Two isoforms of NPR-1 that differ at a single residue occur in the wild. One isoform, NPR-1 215F, is found exclusively in social strains, while the other isoform, NPR-1 215V, is found exclusively in solitary strains. An NPR-1 215V transgene can induce solitary feeding behavior in a wild social strain. Thus, isoforms of a putative neuropeptide receptor generate natural variation in C. elegans feeding behavior.
秀丽隐杆线虫的自然分离株表现出单独或群居的进食行为。单独觅食者在细菌菌苔上移动缓慢并分散在其上，而群居觅食者在细菌上快速移动并聚集在一起。npr-1基因的功能丧失突变会导致单独的菌株表现出群居行为，该基因编码一种预测的G蛋白偶联受体，类似于神经肽Y受体。野生型中存在两种仅在一个残基上不同的NPR-1亚型。一种亚型NPR-1 215F仅存在于群居菌株中，而另一种亚型NPR-1 215V仅存在于单独菌株中。一个NPR-1 215V转基因可以在野生群居菌株中诱导单独进食行为。因此，一种假定的神经肽受体亚型在秀丽隐杆线虫的进食行为中产生了自然变异。
