title: Changes in Postural Syntax Characterize Sensory Modulation and Natural Variation of C. elegans Locomotion.
abstract: Locomotion is driven by shape changes coordinated by the nervous system through time; thus, enumerating an animal's complete repertoire of shape transitions would provide a basis for a comprehensive understanding of locomotor behaviour. Here we introduce a discrete representation of behaviour in the nematode C. elegans. At each point in time, the worm's posture is approximated by its closest matching template from a set of 90 postures and locomotion is represented as sequences of postures. The frequency distribution of postural sequences is heavy-tailed with a core of frequent behaviours and a much larger set of rarely used behaviours. Responses to optogenetic and environmental stimuli can be quantified as changes in postural syntax: worms show different preferences for different sequences of postures drawn from the same set of templates. A discrete representation of behaviour will enable the use of methods developed for other kinds of discrete data in bioinformatics and language processing to be harnessed for the study of behaviour.
authors: European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom.
authors: Roland F
authors: RF
authors: Schwarz
authors: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors: Robyn
authors: R
authors: Branicky
authors: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors: Laura J
authors: LJ
authors: Grundy
authors: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors: William R
authors: WR
authors: Schafer
authors: MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors: André E X
authors: AE
authors: Brown
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000502:physiology*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D019295:Computational Biology; D008124:Locomotion / Q000502:physiology*; D062308:Optogenetics