TY - JOUR T1 - <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> locomotion dynamics is affected by internally localized magnetic fields JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/248369 SP - 248369 AU - Gourgou, Eleni AU - Zhang, Yang AU - Mirzakhalili, Ehsan AU - Epureanu, Bogdan Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/15/248369.abstract N2 - C. elegans with internalized magnetic nanoparticles are placed inside magnetic field to explore effects on locomotion. We hypothesize that internal magnetic fields created by nanoparticles induce localized effects on C. elegans’ locomotion machinery. To test our hypothesis, we use young adult hermaphrodite C. elegans fed on E. coli OP50 mixed with magnetic/paramagnetic nanoparticles of 1μm, 100nm and 40nm diameter. The presence of particles inside the worms’ body is verified by fluorescent and electron microscopy. A custom-made software is used to track freely moving C. elegans in the absence or presence of magnetic field sequentially for 200+200sec. We use established metrics to quantify locomotion-related parameters, including posture, motion and path features. Results show that key features of C. elegans locomotion (e.g., speed, number of bends, motion state and range) are affected by the magnetic field in worms with internalized particles, in contrast to untreated worms, which remain unaffected. Our work contributes on clarifying the magnetic field effect on C. elegans locomotion and introduces C. elegans as a potential model system to explore in vivo the effect of magnetic field gradient on living organisms. ER -