An Analysis of Ultrasound Stimulation Effects on C. Elegans Organisms Motility

This work aims at investigating ultrasound stimulation mechanisms on Caenorhabditis Elegans nematodes, which have a relatively small and well characterized nervous system, through global motility and motion tracking analyses. We carried out several experiments using a purposely developed, low-cost and portable setup on two different C. Elegans strains, i.e. PD8120 and CPV28 strains, the latter being already motility defective. The nematodes, placed within an agar substrate on a Petri dish in a small water tank, underwent ultrasound stimulation with repeated pulses at fixed time intervals for 5 minutes. Videos of the nematodes on the plate were recorded using a USB microscope, before, during and after the treatment. Then, they were analyzed with the INVAPP-Paragon algorithm for global motility evaluation and also by performing motion tracking of nematodes. The preliminary results obtained so far demonstrate that both types of insonified nematode populations show a decrease of motility, which can be visually observed and quantitatively measured. Overall, this suggests an inhibitory effect of ultrasonic stimulation on motion with the stimulation parameters here considered, which will be further investigated in future work on a higher and diversified number of cases, in order to better understand the underlying mechanisms.