Figure 3. AMPK regulates glutamatergic signalling.

(A,B) ChR2-mediated activation of AIY interneurons (A), or ARCH -mediated silencing of AIB interneurons (B) in starved aak-2 mutants grown in the presence of all-trans retinal (ATR) induces distal exploration by suppressing reversals and inducing forward locomotion (n>15), Error bars represent ± SEM (two-way ANOVA *p<0.05, ***p<0.0001). (C,D,E) Compromised eat-4, glr-1 or mgl-1 function rescues the defective exploratory behaviour of starved aak-2 mutants by inducing forward locomotion (i) and suppressing reversals (ii) (n>20), (one-way ANOVA *p<0.05, **p<0.001, ***p<0.0001). In the box and whisker plots (C,D,E) the central line is the median, the edges of the box are the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the whiskers extend to the most extreme data points.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16349.012

Figure 3—figure supplement 1. glr-1, eat-4 and mgl-1 are epistatic to aak-2.

(A) sid-1 [Punc-119::sid-1+ Pmyo-2::mCherry] or aak-2; sid-1 [Punc-119::sid-1+ Pmyo-2::mCherry] young adult animals grown on HT-115 E. coli clones expressing double stranded RNAi targeting various RNAi clones were starved for 1 hr and their locomotory behaviour was assessed (n>10). Among all the potential phosphorylation targets of AMPK within the AIB and AIY interneurons, glr-1, eat-4 and mgl-1 displayed epistatic relationship with aak-2 in both forward (i) and backward locomotion (ii). (B) Depletion of nmr-1, avr-14 and mgl-2 in aak-2 background did not result in any additive or epistatic relationship with aak-2 (n>10). Error bars represent SEM (one-way ANOVA *p<0.05, **p<0.001, ***p<0.0001).

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16349.016