High-Throughput Behavioral Analysis in C. elegans

We designed a real-time computer vision system, the Multi-Worm Tracker (MWT), which can simultaneously quantify the behavior of dozens of Caenorhabditis elegans on a Petri plate at video rates. We examined three traditional behavioral paradigms using this system: spontaneous movement on food, where the behavior changes over tens of minutes; chemotaxis, where turning events must be detected accurately to determine strategy; and habituation of response to tap, where the response is stochastic and changes over time. In each case, manual analysis or automated single-worm tracking would be tedious and time-consuming, but the MWT system allowed rapid quantification of behavior with minimal human effort. Thus, this system will enable large-scale forward and reverse genetic screens for complex behaviors.

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  Nature Methods

• Publication date

  2011-05-31

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Computer Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/nmeth.1625PMID 21642964PMCID 3128206
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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