Food deprivation changes chemotaxis behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans

Kei Shimizu; Keita Ashida; Kohji Hotta; Kotaro Oka

doi:10.2142/biophysico.16.0_167

Food deprivation changes chemotaxis behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans

Biophys Physicobiol. 2019 Nov 2:16:167-172. doi: 10.2142/biophysico.16.0_167. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Kei Shimizu¹, Keita Ashida¹, Kohji Hotta¹, Kotaro Oka^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Bioscience and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan.
² Graduate Institute of Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung City 80708, Taiwan.
³ Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8480, Japan.

Abstract

Exploring for food is important in food-deprived condition. Chemotaxis is one of the important behaviors to search food. Although chemotactic strategies in C. elegans have been well investigated: the pirouette and the weathervane strategies, the change of the chemotactic strategy by food deprivation is largely unclear. Here, we show the change of chemotactic strategy by food deprivation, especially for isoamyl alcohol. To compare chemotaxis under different food-deprivation period, we showed that worms change their chemotactic behaviors by food deprivation. The worms with 1-h food-deprivation change the weathervane strategy. On the other hand, 6-h food deprived animals change the pirouette strategy. These results demonstrate that worms change chemotactic strategy different way depend on period of food deprivation.

Keywords: behavioral strategy; chemotaxis; foraging; olfactory; starvation.