Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28103804›Full record

ArticleBMC bioinformatics2017

Inactivity periods and postural change speed can explain atypical postural change patterns of Caenorhabditis elegans mutants.

Tsukasa Fukunaga, Wataru Iwasaki

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In one paragraph

Article in BMC bioinformatics, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Tsukasa FukunagaDepartment of Computational Biology and Medical Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, 277-8568, Japan. t.fukunaga@kurenai.waseda.jp.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4442-6049
Wataru IwasakiDepartment of Computational Biology and Medical Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, 277-8568, Japan. iwasaki@bs.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundWith rapid advances in genome sequencing and editing technologies, systematic and quantitative analysis of animal behavior is expected to be another key to facilitating data-driven behavioral genetics. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a model organism in this field. Several video-tracking systems are available for automatically recording behavioral data for the nematode, but computational methods for analyzing these data are still under development.

resultsIn this study, we applied the Gaussian mixture model-based binning method to time-series postural data for 322 C. elegans strains. We revealed that the occurrence patterns of the postural states and the transition patterns among these states have a relationship as expected, and such a relationship must be taken into account to identify strains with atypical behaviors that are different from those of wild type. Based on this observation, we identified several strains that exhibit atypical transition patterns that cannot be fully explained by their occurrence patterns of postural states. Surprisingly, we found that two simple factors-overall acceleration of postural movement and elimination of inactivity periods-explained the behavioral characteristics of strains with very atypical transition patterns; therefore, computational analysis of animal behavior must be accompanied by evaluation of the effects of these simple factors. Finally, we found that the npr-1 and npr-3 mutants have similar behavioral patterns that were not predictable by sequence homology, proving that our data-driven approach can reveal the functions of genes that have not yet been characterized.

conclusionWe propose that elimination of inactivity periods and overall acceleration of postural change speed can explain behavioral phenotypes of strains with very atypical postural transition patterns. Our methods and results constitute guidelines for effectively finding strains that show "truly" interesting behaviors and systematically uncovering novel gene functions by bioimage-informatic approaches.

Indexed as

AnimalsBehavior, AnimalCaenorhabditis elegansCaenorhabditis elegans ProteinsModels, TheoreticalMutationReceptors, Neuropeptide YCaenorhabditis elegans ProteinsNPR-1 protein, C elegansReceptors, Neuropeptide YComputational ethologyEigenwormsTransition patterns of posturesWorm posture analysis

Identifiers

PMID28103804
PMCPMC5244558

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.