Muscle contraction phenotypic analysis enabled by optogenetics reveals functional relationships of sarcomere components in Caenorhabditis elegans.

ABSTRACT: The sarcomere, the fundamental unit of muscle contraction, is a highly-ordered complex of hundreds of proteins. Despite decades of genetics work, the functional relationships and the roles of those sarcomeric proteins in animal behaviors remain unclear. In this paper, we demonstrate that optogenetic activation of the motor neurons that induce muscle contraction can facilitate quantitative studies of muscle kinetics in C. elegans. To increase the throughput of the study, we trapped multiple worms in parallel in a microfluidic device and illuminated for photoactivation of channelrhodopsin-2 to induce contractions in body wall muscles. Using image processing, the change in body size was quantified over time. A total of five parameters including rate constants for contraction and relaxation we

SUBMITTER: Hwang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4731793 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature