(200h) Visualizing the Trajectory of Behavioral Changes in C. Elegans

Characterizing the progression of disease in an organism often requires integrating information from transient behaviors to slowly-changing attributes over a lifetime. Using the model organism C. elegans, we integrate high-dimensional phenotypic information on growth, posture, trajectory, and activity level across time-scales ranging from seconds to several days.  Behavior on short time-scales is characterized using a hidden-Markov model. These states are used to create stereotyped trajectories of how populations of worms travel through behavior space during the first third of their adult lives. We show that perturbing the health of worms using environmental and genetic insults leaves a distinct impact on behavior worms engage in that persists over several days.