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Fig. 5 | BMC Biology

Fig. 5

From: Serotonin promotes exploitation in complex environments by accelerating decision-making

Fig. 5

Both ADF and NSM serotonergic neuron types affect the dynamics of slowdown. a The mean speeds of transgenics in which NSM or ADF have been genetically silenced. The time of encounter with a large bacterial lawn was defined as t = 0 . Traces are shown without standard errors as a guide to the eye; see summary statistics in next panel. b The speeds of the strains shown in panel (a) shortly after the encounter and their baseline speeds on food 20 min later. Bars depict mean ± SEM and the number of animals assayed for each strain is noted in parentheses. Double asterisks denote a significant difference from wild-type, P <0.01. Data from wild-type and Ptph-1::TeTx strains was reproduced from Fig. 2 and shown as dashed lines and empty bars for comparison. (c, d) Same as panels (a, b), except that the genetic silencing was performed on a mod-5 mutant background. (e, f) Same as panels (a, b) for transgenics in which the intact tph-1 gene was rescued in NSM, in ADF, or in both. Combined, genetic silencing and rescue assays implicate both neuronal types in mediating the observed behavior. (g, h) Same as panels (a, b) for Cre-mediated deletions of the tph-1 genes (see [20]). In all bar plots, mean velocities were compared to wild-type using an ANOVA test and corrected post hoc for multiple comparisons using Tukey’s HSD test. Single and double asterisks denote a significant difference from wild-type (P <0.05 and P <0.01, respectively). Three independent transgenic lines were assayed in the cases of NSM::TeTx, ADF::TeTx, NSM::tph-1, and ADF::tph-1. One of each of the TeTx lines (Ptph-1::TeTx, NSM::TeTx, and ADF::TeTx) was crossed to a mod-5(n3314) mutant background and similarly assayed. One line was assayed for each floxed tph-1 deletion strain [20]

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