Biology subjects

Casademunt, H.

Publications and source records attributed to Casademunt, H..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Brain-wide representations of olfactory behavior in C. elegans

Olfactory navigation emerges from dynamic interactions between sensory input, brain activity state and the animal's own movements. In C. elegans, a compact nervous system enables brain-wide imaging in behaving animals exposed to controlled olfactory environments, with an undulatory locomotion that reduces navigation to transitions among forward runs, reversals, and turns. Here, we used tracking microscopy to record and compare brain-wide neural activity in crawling worms navigating spatial odor gradients or isotropic environments, and in immobilized worms responding to temporal odor pulses. Across conditions, we identified strongly correlated brain-wide activity patterns spanning olfactory sensory neurons, interneurons, and premotor interneurons. Comparisons between navigation in odor gradients and exploration in isotropic environments revealed a compact functional circuit linking olfactory sensory neurons, interneurons, and premotor neurons. Comparisons between different odors distinguished sensory activity relationships associated with odor identity from a shared sensorimotor circuit for navigational movement. Comparisons between crawling and immobilized animals revealed profound differences in motor-state transitions and brain-wide correlation structure, further demonstrating the dependence of sensory representations and motor decision-making on behavioral context. Our findings reveal a functional organization linking olfactory sensory activity to navigational movement and show how this organization depends on behavioral state and environmental context.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

The anticonvulsant and mood-stabilizing drug valproic acid attracts C. elegans and activates chemosensory neurons via a cGMP signaling pathway

Valproic acid (VPA) is a drug with both anticonvulsant and antimanic properties. It has been widely prescribed to treat epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and other neuropsychiatric conditions for decades, but prenatal exposure is linked to developmental anomalies, cognitive deficits, and an increased risk of autism. Remarkably, the molecular basis of VPA action in the brain is not fully understood. To determine VPAs effect on the nervous system without requiring systemic drug application that induce toxic effects, we exploited the well-characterized chemotaxis behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We found that C. elegans are attracted to VPA, and this behavior is missing in animals lacking the tax-4 ion channel and the tax-4-expressing AWC chemosensory neurons. To test the idea that VPA directly activates the AWC neurons, we performed calcium imaging studies in a line expressing GCaMP6s in all amphid chemosensory neurons in the head. We found that VPA evoked calcium transients consistently in the AWC neurons and variably in AWB and ASH. As cyclic nucleotide-gated channels, the active state of tax-4 increases upon the binding of cGMP. Within the worms chemosensory nervous system, receptor guanylate cyclases (rGCs) facilitate the synthesis of cGMP and serve as chemoreceptors for various chemical cues. By performing chemotaxis assays and calcium imaging experiments with rGC mutants against VPA, we found that odr-1 and gcy-28 are essential for mediating VPA attraction, as their absence disrupts both behavior and control AWC calcium transients. However, given their broad use in chemosensation, odr-1 and gcy-28 most likely act as downstream effectors rather than as direct targets. These findings compelled us to investigate whether chemoreceptors belonging to the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family contribute to VPA sensing. We approached this hypothesis by conducting chemotaxis assays with G mutants and identified several (odr-3, egl-30, gpa-2;gpa-3) whose absence leads to a loss of VPA attraction. Thus, future studies should focus on elucidating the mechanisms by which GPCRs contribute to VPA sensing and cGMP signaling.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Functional imaging and quantification of multi-neuronal olfactory responses in C. elegans

Many animals perceive odorant molecules by collecting information from ensembles of olfactory neurons. Each neuron employs receptors that are tuned to recognize certain odorant molecules by chemical binding affinity. Olfactory systems are able, in principle, to detect and discriminate diverse odorants by using combinatorial coding strategies. Multineuronal imaging with high-throughput stimulus delivery allows comprehensive measurement of ensemble-level sensory representations. We have used microfluidics and multineuronal imaging to study ensemble-level olfactory representations at the sensory periphery of the nematode C. elegans. The collective activity of nematode chemosensory neurons reveals high-dimensional representations of olfactory information across a broad space of odorant molecules. We reveal diverse tuning properties and dose-response curves across chemosensory neurons and across odorants. We describe the unique contribution of each sensory neuron to an ensemble-level code for volatile odorants. We also show how natural stimuli, a set of nematode pheromones, are encoded by the sensory periphery. The integrated activity of the C. elegans chemosensory neurons contains sufficient information to robustly encode the intensity and identity of diverse chemical stimuli.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Model for disordered proteins with strongly sequence-dependent liquid phase behavior

Phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins is important for the formation of membraneless organelles, or biomolecular condensates, which play key roles in the regulation of biochemical processes within cells. In this work, we investigated the phase separation of different sequences of a coarse-grained model for intrinsically disordered proteins and discovered a surprisingly rich phase behavior. We studied both the fraction of total hydrophobic parts and the distribution of hydrophobic parts. Not surprisingly, sequences with larger hydrophobic fractions showed conventional liquid-liquid phase separation. The location of the critical point was systematically influenced by the terminal beads of the sequence, due to changes in interfacial composition and tension. For sequences with lower hydrophobicity, we observed not only conventional liquid-liquid phase separation, but also reentrant phase behavior, in which the liquid phase density decreases at lower temperatures. For some sequences, we observed formation of open phases consisting of aggregates, rather than a normal liquid. These aggregates had overall lower densities than the conventional liquid phases, and exhibited complex geometries with large interconnected string-like or membrane-like clusters. Our findings suggest that minor alterations in the ordering of residues may lead to large changes in the phase behavior of the protein, a fact of significant potential relevance for biology.

biophysics↗