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Testing Shank 3-deficient C. elegans as an Autism model on repetitive/social deficits from my last study on NLG-1 mutant

CSEF · 2023 Behavioral & Social Sciences Third Award

Balasingam Sasha · 12

Overview

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by an obsessive adherence to repetitive motion, language, and behavior. Neuroligin, a trans-synaptic adhesion molecule, has been discovered as a potential genetic determinant of behavioral traits of signature neuroatypical behaviors in people with autism. People with Autism typically have a mutation in their NLG-3 (neuroligin 3) gene. Therefore, the correlation between neuroligin and how it impacts Autism, has raised questions in the science world. I am doing this project to continue and expand off my identification of neuroligin-deficient C. elegans as promising model organisms for autism research. Shank proteins have been implicated in synaptic transmission and synapse formation. Because social behavioral deficits in Autism have been shown to be linked from lack of proper/efficient synaptic transmission, it has also been hypothesized that Shank mutations can also be linked to developmental disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorder. In this experiment, I tested a understudied model and gene of C. elegans in Autism research (Shank 3) to compare to neuroligin-deficient C. elegans to see whether Shank 3-deficient C. elegans could model Autism as effective as neuroligin-deficient C. elegans. My results showed there was a significant difference between both repetitive and social locomotion between SHANK-3 C. elegans and N2 C. elegans. Furthermore, there was an insignificant difference between SHANK-3 and NLG-1 repetitive and social behavior showing both models of C. elegans are supportive of modeling autism. This study suggests that in future studies, SHANK-3 C. elegans will be a promising model for testing preliminary treatment for targeting Autistic behavior.

Source coverage

This record comes from a published award list, not a complete project archive. Its abstract comes from CSEF's public project showcase as archived by the Internet Archive before judging (https://web.archive.org/web/20230401224130/https://ca-csef.zfairs.com/showcase/ShowcaseInfo?f=838e60b7-ea75-46e8-865c-fde4864244b3); the version presented may differ.

Awards (1)

Competition history

  • CSEF 2023 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0414

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