TY - JOUR T1 - The Emergent Connectome in <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> Embryogenesis JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/146035 SP - 146035 AU - DevoWorm Group AU - Bradly Alicea Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/05/146035.abstract N2 - The relatively new field of connectomics provides us with a unique window into nervous systems and neuronal systems function. In the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, this promise is even greater due to the relatively small cellular size (302 cells) of the nervous system. While the adult C. elegans connectome has been characterized, the emergence of these networks in development has yet to be established. In this paper, we approach this problem using secondary data describing the birth times of terminally-differentiated cells as they appear in the embryo and connectomics data for pharyngeal neurons in the adult hermaphrodite. By combining these two sources of data, we can better understand what an incipient connectome look like. This includes identifying at what point in embryogenesis the connectome first comes into being, observing some of the earliest connectivity patterns, and making comparisons between the formally-defined connectome and the embryogenetic interactome. An analysis is also conducted to root terminally-differentiated pharyngeal neurons in their developmental cell lineage. This analysis reveals subnetworks with different properties at 300 minutes of embryogenesis. Overall, this analysis reveals important information about the birth order of specific cells, key building blocks of global connectivity, and how these structures corresponds to various embryogenetic stages during the emergence of a connectome. ER -