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

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans 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. © 2011 European Molecular Biology Organization. All Rights Reserved.