Figure 1.

A. Diagram of C. elegans LAM-3/laminin α and LAMA5_human (human laminin α5). N in a green rectangle: N-terminal domain; Yellow rounded rectangles: rod-domains composed of EGF repeats; L4a and L4b: laminin IV domain type A and B; helix mark: coiled-coil domain; G: globular domain at C-terminal. The red asterisks indicate the locations of the RGD motif. They were adopted and modified from diagrams (Colognato and Yurchenco 2000; Huang et al. 2003).

B. N2 thrashing. The position represents the thrashing behavior of C. elegans in M9 buffer, which is the coordinated contraction of body wall muscles. A horizontal line across the midpoint helps to visualize the axis to which the anterior and posterior body bends.

C. The position shown here demonstrates uncoordinated body bends. This thrashing was counted as a “hook”-shaped overbending, which resulted from either the anterior or posterior end of the nematode contracts or bends for the maximum degree towards the mid-body region. This worm failed to show sinuous or rhythmic bending by having a tendency to pause at a contracted position, shown here. A horizontal line across the midpoint helps to visualize the axis.

D. This worm represents a full-length body overbending. This bending results from the hyper-contraction of both the anterior and posterior end simultaneously. It results in overcrossing of the head and tail, as shown in the panel. A horizontal line across the midpoint helps to visualize the axis.

E. One-minute thrashing counts. Cross marks in the boxes represent the mean of thrashes. Two mutants, lam-3 RGE (kq1464) and lam-3 ΔRGD (kq1461), have a higher mean of thrashes than that of N2.

F. Overbending shown in panels C and D were counted for each strain. One outlier is shown as a dot outside the fourth quartile of lam-3 ΔRGD (kq1461) panel. N = 50.

G. Levamisole assay. The percentage of paralyzed animals at three different time points over the course of 30 minutes.