RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Intricate response dynamics enhances stimulus discrimination in the resource-limited <em>C. elegans</em> chemosensory system
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2024.01.14.575365
DO 10.1101/2024.01.14.575365
A1 Bokman, Eduard
A1 Pritz, Christian O.
A1 Ruach, Rotem
A1 Itskovits, Eyal
A1 Sharvit, Hadar
A1 Zaslaver, Alon
YR 2024
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/01/15/2024.01.14.575365.abstract
AB Sensory systems evolved intricate designs to accurately encode perplexing environments. However, this encoding task may become particularly challenging for animals harboring a small number of sensory neurons. Here, we studied how the compact resource-limited chemosensory system of C. elegans uniquely encodes a range of chemical stimuli. We find that each stimulus is encoded using a small and unique subset of neurons, where only a portion of the encoding neurons sense the stimulus directly, and the rest are recruited via inter-neuronal communication. Furthermore, while most neurons show stereotypical response dynamics, some neurons exhibit versatile dynamics that are either stimulus specific or network-activity dependent. Notably, it is the collective dynamics of all responding neurons which provides valuable information that ultimately enhances stimulus identification, particularly when required to discriminate between closely-related stimuli. Together, these findings demonstrate how a compact and resource-limited chemosensory system can efficiently encode and discriminate a diverse range of chemical stimuli.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.All the data and the scripts that analyzed the data to produce the results and the figures herein are available through Github: https://github.com/zaslab/Sensory-encoding