On Prerequisites for Revealing C. elegans Backward Crawling Mechanism through Computer Simulation of Key Involved Subsystems

Relatively simple and exceptionally well-studied invertebrate organism, Caenorhabditis elegans, is expected to become the first one for which a virtual `twin' will be developed. Detailed biologically reasonable computational model of the organism, reproducing its neurophysiology, morphology and biomechanics, will allow to determine the gap between the real nervous systems and their current numerical models. This problem remains one of the key interdisciplinary challenges, requiring efforts both in neuroscience and information technologies. Moreover, even for C. elegans the entire nervous system remains too sophisticated (for current level of science and technology) to build its complete model, that's why here we focus on a separate part of C. elegans nervous system responsible for just one function (with still unknown mechanism) - backwards crawling movement. The choice was caused by the evidence of its ability to function independently from many other quite complex nervous system's parts and mechanisms, which is a big luck. Thus we propose a conception and strategy, based on integration of available experimental data, models and simulation software, which should lead to successful construction of backward crawling computational model, including neuronal level activity, muscular cells contraction and movement of the worm body interacting with virtual physical environment.