Natural Variation for Chemotaxis ^___

Natural isolates of C. elegans display a fair bit of variation for chemotaxis to the chemical benzaldehyde, although they all display the same qualitative response of being repulsed at high concentrations and attracted at intermediate concentrations.

This variation provides the genetic differentiation needed for mapping the genes involved in these responses.

There is also variation within the genus Caenorhabditis that can potentially be used for a comparative QTL mapping approach.

We are pursuing this natural and phylogenetic variation using both quantitative genetic and molecular evolution approaches.