Analysis of the NK2 homeobox gene ceh-24 reveals sublateral motor neuron control of left-right turning during sleep

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Abstract

Sleep is a behavior that is found in all animals that have a nervous system and that have been studied carefully. In Caenorhabditis elegans larvae, sleep is associated with a turning behavior, called flipping, in which animals rotate 180{degree sign} about their longitudinal axis. However, the molecular and neural substrates of this enigmatic behavior are not known. Here, we identified the conserved NK-2 homeobox gene ceh-24 to be crucially required for flipping. ceh-24 is required for the formation of processes and for cholinergic function of sublateral motor neurons, which separately innervate the four body muscle quadrants. Knockdown of cholinergic function in a subset of these sublateral neurons, the SIAs, abolishes flipping. The SIAs depolarize during flipping and their optogenetic activation induces flipping in a fraction of events. Thus, we identified the sublateral SIA neurons to control the three-dimensional movements of flipping. These neurons may also control other types of motion.

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Henrik Bringmann

Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany

For correspondence
henrik.bringmann@mpibpc.mpg.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7689-8617
Juliane Schwarz

Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Research Group (Open-access funding))

Henrik Bringmann

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

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