Abstract
Lesioning studies have provided important insight into the functions of brain regions in humans and other animals. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, with a small nervous system of 302 identified neurons, it is possible to generate lesions with single cell resolution and infer the roles of individual neurons in behaviour. Here we present a dataset of ~300 video recordings representing the locomotor behaviour of animals carrying single-cell ablations of 5 different motorneurons. Each file includes a raw video of approximately 27,000 frames; each frame has also been segmented to yield the position, contour, and body curvature of the tracked animal. These recordings can be further analysed using publicly-available software to extract features relevant to behavioural phenotypes. This dataset therefore represents a useful resource for probing the neural basis of behaviour in C. elegans, a resource we hope to augment in the future with ablation recordings for additional neurons.
Highlights
Background & SummaryThe nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has become an important experimental organism for neuroscience in part because of its small and well-characterised nervous system
The C. elegans nervous system is invariant in cell number, consisting of 302 neurons in the adult hermaphrodite
Each of these neurons can be uniquely identified based on its cell lineage and position in the animal, and the connections made by each neuron have been determined by reconstructions of serial electron micrographs[1]. This complete connectome provides an opportunity to address the roles of individual neurons in the generation and control of specific behaviours
Summary
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has become an important experimental organism for neuroscience in part because of its small and well-characterised nervous system. We present a dataset of raw and processed video recordings of C. elegans carrying single motorneuron ablations along with mock-ablated control recordings These include animals lacking one of four DD motorneurons (ventral cord neurons which relax dorsal body muscle) as well as animals lacking the PDB neuron, a cell whose function has not been previously investigated. We include the raw recording, accessory data files required for analysis, a processed recording in which frames have been segmented to identify the tracked worm and determine its contour and curvature (Fig. 1), and a feature file containing frame-by-frame measurements of locomotion-related features, including eigenworm data These data were originally collected to test theoretical predictions about neural requirements for motor control[12], they represent a useful resource for investigators interested in carrying out their own analyses of nematode locomotion. We intend to augment this dataset with additional neural ablations, with the long-term goal of comprehensively phenotyping all single neuron ablations in C. elegans
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