Journal
G3-GENES GENOMES GENETICS
Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 265-276Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1534/g3.113.008649
Keywords
Caenorhabditis elegans; olfaction; natural variation; Serratia marcescens
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Funding
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- National Science Foundation [0706753]
- National Institutes of Health [R01GM089972]
- Div Of Biological Infrastructure
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0706753] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans can use olfaction to discriminate among different kinds of bacteria, its major food source. We asked how natural genetic variation contributes to choice behavior, focusing on differences in olfactory preference behavior between two wild-type C. elegans strains. The laboratory strain N2 strongly prefers the odor of Serratia marcescens, a soil bacterium that is pathogenic to C. elegans, to the odor of Escherichia coli, a commonly used laboratory food source. The divergent Hawaiian strain CB4856 has a weaker attraction to Serratia than the N2 strain, and this behavioral difference has a complex genetic basis. At least three quantitative trait loci (QTLs) from the CB4856 Hawaii strain (HW) with large effect sizes lead to reduced Serratia preference when introgressed into an N2 genetic background. These loci interact and have epistatic interactions with at least two antagonistic QTLs from HW that increase Serratia preference. The complex genetic architecture of this C. elegans trait is reminiscent of the architecture of mammalian metabolic and behavioral traits.
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