Abstract
The brain plays a central role in food-sensing but how it maintains these functions despite environmental fluctuations is unexplored, representing fundamental questions in genetics, physiology, neuroscience, and systems biology. We investigate how a C. elegans neural network can discriminate between food levels to modulate ageing across a large temperature range. This sensory network is particularly interesting because it uses gene activity to encode food and its connectivity changes with temperature. These novel forms of neural computations support temperature-robust food-sensing. We will combine high-throughput microscopy, advanced genetic, and modelling to study temperature-dependent plasticity in network connectivity and its impact on robustness.
References
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