Stress and timing associated with immobilization methods.

Background: is a model organism used to study gene, protein, and cell influence on function and behavior. These studies frequently require to be immobilized for imaging or laser ablation experiments. There are a number of known techniques for immobilizing worms, but to our knowledge, there are no comprehensive studies of the various agents in common use today.

BKIP-1, an auxiliary subunit critical to SLO-1 function, inhibits SLO-2 potassium channel in vivo.

Auxiliary subunits are often needed to tailor K channel functional properties and expression levels. Many auxiliary subunits have been identified for mammalian Slo1, a high-conductance K channel gated by voltage and Ca. Experiments with heterologous expression systems show that some of the identified Slo1 auxiliary subunits can also regulate other Slo K channels.

Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses.

Neurons communicate through chemical synapses and electrical synapses (gap junctions). Although these two types of synapses often coexist between neurons, little is known about whether they interact, and whether any interactions between them are important to controlling synaptic strength and circuit functions. By studying chemical and electrical synapses between premotor interneurons (AVA) and downstream motor neurons (A-MNs) in the Caenorhabditis elegans escape circuit, we found that disrupting either the chemical or electrical synapses causes defective escape response.