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Modeling of the pharyngeal muscle in Caenorhabditis elegans based on FitzHugh-Nagumo equations

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Abstract

The pharyngeal pumping motion to send food to the bowel is a rhythmic movement in Caenorhabditis elegans. This paper proposes a simulation-based approach to investigate the mechanisms of rhythm phenomena in the pharyngeal pumping motion. To conduct the simulations, first, we developed a pharyngeal muscle model including 29 cell models which simulate the activity of each cell as a membrane potential based on FitzHugh-Nagumo equations. Then, to compare the response of the model with that of C. elegans, we calculated the electropharyngeogram (EPG), which represents the electrophysiological responses of the pharyngeal cells, using the simulated membrane potentials. The results confirmed that our model could generate the EPG similar to that measured from C. elegans. We proposed a computer simulation of the pumping motion to investigate the mechanisms of rhythm phenomena in living organisms.

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Acknowledgments

We thank members of the Microbeam Radiation Biology Group at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency for valuable discussions. This study was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas from MEXT to T.T. (No. 20115010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of System Cybernetics, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, 739-8527, Hiroshima, Japan

    Yuya Hattori

  2. Microbeam Radiation Biology Group, Quantum Beam Science Directorate, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 370-1292, Gunma, Japan

    Yuya Hattori, Michiyo Suzuki & Yasuhiko Kobayashi

  3. Department of Neurophysiology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Hiroshima University, 734-8551, Hiroshima, Japan

    Zu Soh

  4. Department of System Cybernetics, Institute of Engineering, Hiroshima University, 739-8527, Hiroshima, Japan

    Toshio Tsuji

Authors
  1. Yuya Hattori
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  2. Michiyo Suzuki
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  3. Zu Soh
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  4. Yasuhiko Kobayashi
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  5. Toshio Tsuji
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Correspondence to Yuya Hattori.

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Hattori, Y., Suzuki, M., Soh, Z. et al. Modeling of the pharyngeal muscle in Caenorhabditis elegans based on FitzHugh-Nagumo equations. Artif Life Robotics 17, 173–179 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-012-0064-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-012-0064-y

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