| |
| author |
Krishna Patel
| | title |
The Roles of Neurexin in Caenorhabditis elegans Behavior
| | abstract |
Neurexin (nrx-1) is the presynaptic terminal protein responsible for forming and
maintaining the synapse. As opposed to the three neurexin genes that mammals have,
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) have one copy, which allows for easier characterization and
makes these nematodes a great model organism. The nrx-1 gene of C. elegans also has different
promoters, which lead to an alpha (α) and a gamma (γ) isoform. This study focuses on how nrx-1
isoforms affect the behavior of worm strains that have mutations in this gene by using
chemotaxis as the assay. Two attractants and one repellent were tested on the wildtype N2 strain,
TV13570 mutant strain (non-functional α and γ regions of nrx-1), and the SG1 mutant strain
(non-functional α region of nrx-1). Based on the number of worms and where they moved
during the assay, the chemotaxis index was calculated to determine to what degree of attraction
or repulsion was experienced by the worms. For the diacetyl chemotaxis assays, there was
statistically significant difference between N2 strain and both TV13570 and SG1, but there was
no statistically significant difference between TV13570 strain and SG1 mutant strain. Therefore,
it can be concluded that the α region of nrx-1 influences the behavioral change between the
tested C. elegans strains.
| | school |
The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University
| | degree |
B.S. (2022)
|
| advisor |
Marvin Bayne
|
| full text | KPatel.pdf |
| |
