Abstract
An important feature of animal behavior is the ability to switch rapidly between activity states, however, how the brain regulates these spontaneous transitions based on the animal’s perceived environment is not well understood. Here we show a C. elegans sleep-like state on a scalable platform that enables simultaneous control of multiple environmental factors including temperature, mechanical stress, and food availability. This brief quiescent state, which we refer to as microfluidic-induced sleep, occurs spontaneously in microfluidic chambers, which allows us to track animal movement and perform whole-brain imaging. With these capabilities, we establish that microfluidic-induced sleep meets the behavioral requirements of C. elegans sleep and depends on multiple factors, such as satiety and temperature. Additionally, we show that C. elegans sleep can be induced through mechanosensory pathways. Together, these results establish a model system for studying how animals process multiple sensory pathways to regulate behavioral states.
Highlights
An important feature of animal behavior is the ability to switch rapidly between activity states, how the brain regulates these spontaneous transitions based on the animal’s perceived environment is not well understood
When confined to microfluidic chambers we found that adult C. elegans rapidly and spontaneously switch between normal activity and brief quiescent bouts without any additional stimuli (Fig. 1a)
We found that the onset, frequency, and duration of quiescent bouts in microfluidic chambers are unique compared with previously reported sleep behaviors in adult C. elegans (Fig. 1)
Summary
An important feature of animal behavior is the ability to switch rapidly between activity states, how the brain regulates these spontaneous transitions based on the animal’s perceived environment is not well understood. We show a C. elegans sleep-like state on a scalable platform that enables simultaneous control of multiple environmental factors including temperature, mechanical stress, and food availability This brief quiescent state, which we refer to as microfluidic-induced sleep, occurs spontaneously in microfluidic chambers, which allows us to track animal movement and perform whole-brain imaging. Studies with C. elegans have revealed molecular pathways[18,25,26,27,28], neural circuits[25,29,30,31,32,33,34], and neuropeptides[30,33,35,36] that drive nematode sleep and arousal, and some of these mechanisms are conserved in other animals[37,38,39] These reports have paved the way for using C. elegans sleep as a model system to understand spontaneous brainstate transitions between sleep and wakefulness. While microfluidic-induced sleep is likely a form of previously reported nematode quiescence behaviors, such as stress-induced sleep and episodic swimming[31,40], the rapid rate of state transitions and the fact that these quiescence behaviors occur in microfluidic devices provides a number of advantages for studying the mechanisms of state transitions with precise environmental controllability, high-throughput screenings, and whole-brain imaging
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