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Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva

Many organisms—from bacteria to nematodes to insect larvae—navigate their environments by biasing random movements. In these organisms, navigation in isotropic environments can be characterized as an essentially diffusive and undirected process. In stimulus gradients, movement decisions are biased t...

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Autores principales: Klein, Mason, Krivov, Sergei V, Ferrer, Anggie J, Luo, Linjiao, Samuel, Aravinthan DT, Karplus, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29083306
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.30503
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author Klein, Mason
Krivov, Sergei V
Ferrer, Anggie J
Luo, Linjiao
Samuel, Aravinthan DT
Karplus, Martin
author_facet Klein, Mason
Krivov, Sergei V
Ferrer, Anggie J
Luo, Linjiao
Samuel, Aravinthan DT
Karplus, Martin
author_sort Klein, Mason
collection PubMed
description Many organisms—from bacteria to nematodes to insect larvae—navigate their environments by biasing random movements. In these organisms, navigation in isotropic environments can be characterized as an essentially diffusive and undirected process. In stimulus gradients, movement decisions are biased to drive directed navigation toward favorable environments. How does directed navigation in a gradient modulate random exploration either parallel or orthogonal to the gradient? Here, we introduce methods originally used for analyzing protein folding trajectories to study the trajectories of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the Drosophila larva in isotropic environments, as well as in thermal and chemical gradients. We find that the statistics of random exploration in any direction are little affected by directed movement along a stimulus gradient. A key constraint on the behavioral strategies of these organisms appears to be the preservation of their capacity to continuously explore their environments in all directions even while moving toward favorable conditions.
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spelling pubmed-56622912017-11-01 Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva Klein, Mason Krivov, Sergei V Ferrer, Anggie J Luo, Linjiao Samuel, Aravinthan DT Karplus, Martin eLife Computational and Systems Biology Many organisms—from bacteria to nematodes to insect larvae—navigate their environments by biasing random movements. In these organisms, navigation in isotropic environments can be characterized as an essentially diffusive and undirected process. In stimulus gradients, movement decisions are biased to drive directed navigation toward favorable environments. How does directed navigation in a gradient modulate random exploration either parallel or orthogonal to the gradient? Here, we introduce methods originally used for analyzing protein folding trajectories to study the trajectories of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the Drosophila larva in isotropic environments, as well as in thermal and chemical gradients. We find that the statistics of random exploration in any direction are little affected by directed movement along a stimulus gradient. A key constraint on the behavioral strategies of these organisms appears to be the preservation of their capacity to continuously explore their environments in all directions even while moving toward favorable conditions. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC5662291/ /pubmed/29083306 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.30503 Text en © 2017, Klein et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Computational and Systems Biology
Klein, Mason
Krivov, Sergei V
Ferrer, Anggie J
Luo, Linjiao
Samuel, Aravinthan DT
Karplus, Martin
Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title_full Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title_fullStr Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title_full_unstemmed Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title_short Exploratory search during directed navigation in C. elegans and Drosophila larva
title_sort exploratory search during directed navigation in c. elegans and drosophila larva
topic Computational and Systems Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662291/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29083306
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.30503
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