A Leak K <sup>+</sup> Channel TWK-40 Regulates Rhythmic Motor Program in <i>C. elegans</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Leak potassium (K + ) currents, conducted by two-pore domain K + (K 2P ) channels, are critical for the stabilization of the membrane potential. The effect of K 2P channels on motor rhythm remains enigmatic. We show here that the K 2P TWK-40 regulates the rhythmic defecation motor program (DMP) in Caenorhabditis elegans . Disrupting TWK-40 suppresses the expulsion defects of nlp-40 and aex-2 mutants. By contrast, a gain-of-function ( gf ) mutant of twk-40 significantly reduces the expulsion frequency per DMP cycle. In situ whole-cell patch clamping demonstrates that TWK-40 forms an outward current that hyperpolarize the resting membrane potential of DVB neuron. In addition, TWK-40 substantially contributes to the rhythmic activity of DVB. Specifically, DVB Ca 2+ oscillations exhibit obvious defects in twk-40 mutants. Expression of TWK-40( gf ) in DVB recapitulates the expulsion deficiency of the twk-40(gf) mutant, and inhibits DVB Ca 2+ oscillations in both wild-type and twk-40(lf) animals. Moreover, DVB innervated enteric muscles also exhibit rhythmic Ca 2+ defects. Taken together, these results demonstrate that TWK-40 is an essential neuronal inhibitor of DMP, thus revealing a cellular mechanism linking leak K 2P channels with rhythmic motor activity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".