Team rewires a behavioral circuit in a worm using hydra parts
Submitted by Harold Saive
For two people to communicate in a loud, crowded room, they need to be standing side by side. The same is often true for neurons in the brain. But the same way a cell phone allows two people to communicate clearly across the room, new research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has opened up a new channel of communication in the brain of the worm C. elegans.
The research, published in Nature Communications, highlights the development of HySyn, a system designed to synthetically reconnect neural circuits using neuropeptides from Hydra, a small, freshwater organism. (Neuropeptides modulate the activity of neurotransmitters to increase or decrease the strength of impulses between neurons.)
For the first time, the researchers created genetic lines of mutant C. elegans that expressed neuropeptides from the Hydra brain, creating an artificial synapse that rewired a behavioral circuit in the worm. Because none of the other synapses in the brain, besides those fitted with the hydra receptor and neuropeptide, could hear the “command,” it was like giving them a cell phone so they could communicate.
“These neuromodulatory peptides let you communicate at a distance,” said MBL Fellow Daniel Colón-Ramos of Yale University School of Medicine.
“It gives you more flexibility as a researcher to manipulate neurons that are not adjacent to each other.” Colón-Ramos, senior author on the paper, was postdoctoral advisor for the paper’s first author, former MBL Grass Fellow Josh Hawk. The work and analysis was performed at the MBL and at Yale University in Colón-Ramos’s lab
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-