RI: Small: BCSP: The Whole Worm: A Brain-Body-Environment Model of Nematode Chemotaxis

RI：小：BCSP：整个蠕虫：线虫趋化性的脑体环境模型

• 批准号: 1216739
• 负责人: Randall Beer
• 金额: $ 48.94万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-10-01 至 2016-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1216739&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RI; Small; BCSP; Whole; Worm

The overall goal of this work is to construct, analyze and experimentally test a brain-body-environment model of orientation in an invertebrate. Even relatively simple animals exhibit a remarkable combination of flexibility and robustness to their behavior that would be extremely useful to the design of artificial systems. How do animals achieve this difficult balance? Understanding how animals operate as integrated wholes requires building brain-body-environment models of complete animals. This in turn requires an animal system for which detailed behavioral, biomechanical, and neuronal information is available. In this regard, knowledge of the behavior, anatomy, genetics, development and neural connectivity of the nematode worm C. elegans is perhaps the most complete of any animal, with significant progress now also being made on the electrophysiology of its nervous system. Success also requires a modeling methodology that can work cooperatively with experimental methods throughout the project lifecycle and that can provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the integrated functioning of the system. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of whole-animal modeling, this proposal describes a project to construct and analyze an integrated brain-body-environment model of C. elegans klinotaxis, a form of salt chemotaxis in which changes in direction are oriented towards the source through gradual continual adjustments. The approach described here combines connectome data-mining and a novel bracketing methodology, parameter optimization and clustering techniques for working with populations of models, and dynamical and information-theoretic analysis of representative motifs with behavioral manipulations, neuronal ablation and photo-stimulation, and electrophysiological studies on the biological system by an experimental colleague.

这项工作的总体目标是构建、分析和实验测试无脊椎动物的脑-身体-环境定向模型。即使是相对简单的动物，其行为也表现出灵活性和鲁棒性的显着组合，这对于人工系统的设计非常有用。动物如何实现这种艰难的平衡？了解动物如何作为一个整体运作需要建立完整动物的脑-身体-环境模型。这反过来又需要一个能够获得详细的行为、生物力学和神经元信息的动物系统。在这方面，对线虫的行为、解剖学、遗传学、发育和神经连接的了解可能是所有动物中最完整的，目前在其神经系统的电生理学方面也取得了重大进展。成功还需要一种能够在整个项目生命周期中与实验方法协同工作的建模方法，并且可以为解释系统的集成功能提供理论框架。为了证明整体动物建模的可行性，该提案描述了一个项目，用于构建和分析线虫klinotaxis的综合脑-身体-环境模型，klinotaxis是盐趋化性的一种形式，其中方向的变化通过逐步的持续调整朝向源头。这里描述的方法结合了连接组数据挖掘和新颖的包围方法、参数优化和聚类技术，用于处理模型群体，以及通过行为操作、神经元消融和光刺激以及实验同事对生物系统的电生理学研究对代表性主题进行动态和信息理论分析。