Progressive recruitment of distal MEC-4 channels determines touch response strength in C. elegans.

ABSTRACT: Touch deforms, or strains, the skin beyond the immediate point of contact. The spatiotemporal nature of the touch-induced strain fields depend on the mechanical properties of the skin and the tissues below. Somatosensory neurons that sense touch branch out within the skin and rely on a set of mechano-electrical transduction channels distributed within their dendrites to detect mechanical stimuli. Here, we sought to understand how tissue mechanics shape touch-induced mechanical strain across the skin over time and how individual channels located in different regions of the strain field contribute to the overall touch response. We leveraged Caenorhabditis elegans' touch receptor neurons as a simple model amenable to in vivo whole-cell patch-clamp recording and an integrated experiment

SUBMITTER: Katta S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6785734 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature