Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Physiology and Health
Session: 2
Room: Marriott Balcony A
Morganie L. Montgomery - Grambling State University
Co-Author(s): Marilyn Z. Franklin, Grambling State University, Grambling, LA
Inability to make decisions accompanies many neurological diseases and poses real dangers to affected individuals. Studies in lower animals could provide a basis for further understanding of human decision-making and potentially lead to new therapies. Actin is a major component of dendritic spines, which increase in number after training in several animal models (Lai et al. 2012). Dendritic spine morphology is altered in association with several neurological diseases (McCann and Ross, 2017), and actin polymerizing agents have been suggested to improve cognitive function (Kweon et al. 2017). The hypotheses of this study are that planarians can be trained to remember a two-step process in locating food, that acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC) will decrease the time required for acquisition of the memory, and that increased actin expression in planarian heads will occur in association with the training. Planarians are capable of long-term memory formation (Blackiston and Levin 2015) and simple decision-making (Inoue et al. 2015). Planarian synaptic characteristics are similar to those of humans including the presence of dendritic spines (Pagan, 2014). Planarians tend to remain in red light (which they reportedly perceive as darkness) and avoid blue light (Paskin et al. 2014), and in our lab prefer a red background over blue (p = 0.01). We trained planarians in petri dishes placed over red and blue templates to associate blue with prior food locations in the presence (p = .01) and absence (n.s.) of 1 micromolar ALC. Food was present during the thirty 30-minute conditioning sessions over the 6-week period, but absent during testing. We are evaluating decision-making in planarians utilizing a similar paradigm that requires two separate steps to obtain food. Planarians must first leave the side of the dish (where they tend to stay) and then move to the small blue region in the center of the dish. During all testing, planarian locations (red vs. blue) are recorded manually for ten minutes at 15 second intervals. Following the last testing period we plan to evaluate actin isoform expression in the planarian heads using western blot and immunochemical identification as described by Muller et al. (2013). References: Blackiston D; T. Shomrat, et al. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone .00143700 INOUE T et al. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40851-014-0010-z Kweon, Kim, and Lee. Doi: 10.5483/BMBRep.2017.50.1.131 Lai, Franke, and Gan. DOI: 10.1038/nature10792 McCann and Ross. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.05.020 Pagan, O. The First Brain: The Neuroscience of Planarians. 2014. Muller, Diensthuber, et al. doi: 10.137/journal.pone.0070636 Paskin and Jellies, et al. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0114708
Funder Acknowledgement(s): Louisiana Biomedical Research Network ; CMAST (Center for Mathematical Ability in Science and Technology)
Faculty Advisor: Marilyn Z. Franklin, franklinm@gram.edu
Role: I made solutions and fed and changed the water of the planarians. I conditioned planarians, and assisted with testing (It takes two people to perform the testing). I performed a portion of the literature survey and in other ways assisted with planning the experiments. I wrote the abstract but did require assistance in shortening it to 3000 characters. I am working with Dr. Franklin to refine our methodology to study actin expression.