An Electrophysiological Model Of The Pharyngeal Muscle In Caenorhabditis Elegans

The pharyngeal pumping motion to send food to the bowel is a rhythmic movement in Caenorhabditis elegans. We proposed a computer simulation of the pumping motion to investigate the mechanisms of rhythm phenomena in living organisms. To conduct the simulations we developed an electrophysiological model of the pharyngeal muscle that corresponds to the actual structure at a muscular level, and which generates the pumping rhythms. Each of 29 cells was modeled as a membrane potential model to simulate the internal response. The electrophysiological responses of the pharyngeal muscular cells were measured as an electropharyngeogram (EPG) that records the activities of the pharynx as a signal pattern, including the membrane potentials in multiple cells. We also developed an EPG model that calculated EPG based on the outputs of individual membrane-potential models. We confirmed that our model of the pharynx could generate rhythms similar to the EPG measured from C. elegans.