ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Action potentials drive body wall muscle contractions in Caenorhabditis elegans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 90 papers.
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90 citing papers in PubMed.
- Synchronization properties in C. elegans: Relating behavioral circuits to structural and functional neuronal connectivity.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
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- Optimization of connectome weights for a neural network model generating both forward and backward locomotion in C. elegans.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Developmental and geographic transcriptomic variation in Anisakis simplex (s. s.) reveals lncRNA-mediated regulation of mRNA expression.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Activity induced GEM-4/Copine expression inhibits gap junctions and promotes thermosensory plasticity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Identification of molecular nociceptors in Octopus vulgaris through functional characterisation in Caenorhabditis elegans.Biology open · 2026Article
- Nicotine induces abnormal motor coupling through sensitization of a mechanosensory circuit in Caenorhabditis elegans.PLoS biology · 2025Article
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- The roles of feedback loops in the Caenorhabditis elegans rhythmic forward locomotion.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Hierarchical competing inhibition circuits govern motor stability in C. elegans.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Loss of neuropeptidergic regulation of cholinergic transmission induces homeostatic compensation in muscle cells to preserve synaptic strength.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Normal locomotion in zebrafish lacking the sodium channel NaV1.4 suggests that the need for muscle action potentials is not universal.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- TheThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The exocytosis regulator complexin controls spontaneous synaptic vesicle release in a CAPS-dependent manner at C. elegans excitatory synapses.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Biophysical modeling and experimental analysis of the dynamics of C. elegans body-wall muscle cells.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
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30 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The sinusoidal locomotion exhibited by Caenorhabditis elegans predicts a tight regulation of contractions and relaxations of its body wall muscles. Vertebrate skeletal muscle contractions are driven by voltage-gated sodium channel-dependent action potentials. How coordinated motor outputs are regulated in C. elegans, which does not have voltage-gated sodium channels, remains unknown. Here, we show that C. elegans body wall muscles fire all-or-none, calcium-dependent action potentials that are driven by the L-type voltage-gated calcium and Kv1 voltage-dependent potassium channels. We further demonstrate that the excitatory and inhibitory motoneuron activities regulate the frequency of action potentials to coordinate muscle contraction and relaxation, respectively. This study provides direct evidence for the dual-modulatory model of the C. elegans motor circuit; moreover, it reveals a mode of motor control in which muscle cells integrate graded inputs of the nervous system and respond with all-or-none electrical signals.
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