Some like it hot: decoding neurotransmission in the worm's thermotaxis circuit.

EMBO J

Brain Research Centre and Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Published: April 2011

EMBO J 30 7, 1376–1388 (2011); published online February 08 2011 neuroscientists are on track to describe the world's first functional connectome. The work by Ohnishi et al (2011) is an excellent example of this effort. Characterizing glutamatergic transmission within the neural circuit controlling locomotion in thermal gradients, they found that two thermosensory neurons, AFD and AWC, transmitted glutamate signals of opposite polarity to downstream interneuron AIY. The inhibitory glutamatergic signal from AFD promoted cryophilic locomotion, while the excitatory glutamatergic signal from AWC promoted thermophilic locomotion. The balance between these opposing transmissions determined temperature preference. Understanding information processing in the simplest of circuits will give insights into the workings of more complex neural networks.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094122PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/emboj.2011.71DOI Listing

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