Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans
- Illinois State University, United States
- University of Texas at Austin, United States
Abstract
Many organisms spanning from bacteria to mammals orient to the earth's magnetic field. For a few animals, central neurons responsive to earth-strength magnetic fields have been identified; however, magnetosensory neurons have yet to be identified in any animal. We show that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans orients to the earth's magnetic field during vertical burrowing migrations. Well-fed worms migrated up, while starved worms migrated down. Populations isolated from around the world, migrated at angles to the magnetic vector that would optimize vertical translation in their native soil, with northern- and southern-hemisphere worms displaying opposite migratory preferences. Magnetic orientation and vertical migrations required the TAX-4 cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channel in the AFD sensory neuron pair. Calcium imaging showed that these neurons respond to magnetic fields even without synaptic input. C. elegans may have adapted magnetic orientation to simplify their vertical burrowing migration by reducing the orientation task from three dimensions to one.
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© 2015, Vidal-Gadea et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans
eLife 4:e07493.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07493
Further reading
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- Neuroscience
Many animals can orient using the earth’s magnetic field. In a recent study, we performed three distinct behavioral assays providing evidence that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans orients to earth-strength magnetic fields (Vidal-Gadea et al., 2015). A new study by Landler et al. suggests that C. elegans does not orient to magnetic fields (Landler et al., 2018). They also raise conceptual issues that cast doubt on our study. Here, we explain how they appear to have missed positive results in part by omitting controls and running assays longer than prescribed, so that worms switched their preferred migratory direction within single tests. We also highlight differences in experimental methods and interpretations that may explain our different results and conclusions. Together, these findings provide guidance on how to achieve robust magnetotaxis and reinforce our original finding that C. elegans is a suitable model system to study magnetoreception.
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- Neuroscience
A pair of neurons is required for nematodes to be able to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field.
