Effect of altered production and storage of dopamine on development and behavior in C. elegans

Introduction: The nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), is an advantageous model for studying developmental toxicology due to its well defined developmental stages and homology to humans. It has been established that across species, dopaminergic neurons are highly vulnerable to neurotoxicant exposure, resulting in developmental neuronal dysfunction and age-induced degeneration. C. elegans, with genetic perturbations in dopamine system proteins, can provide insight into the mechanisms of dopaminergic neurotoxicants. In this study, we present a comprehensive analysis on the effect of gene mutations in dopamine-related proteins on body size, development, and behavior in C. elegans.
Methods: We studied C. elegans that lack the ability to sequester dopamine (OK411) and that overproduce dopamine (UA57) and a novel strain (MBIA) generated by the genetic crossing of OK411 and UA57, which both lack the ability to sequester dopamine into vesicles and, additionally, endogenously overprodu..., , , # Effect of altered production and storage of dopamine on development and behavior in C. elegans

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hhmgqnkpf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hhmgqnkpf)

This dataset contains the raw data corresponding to the manuscript \"Effect of altered production and storage of dopamine on development and behavior in C. elegans.\" The data presented here was in effort to understand and characterize the role of dopamine neurotransmission in *C. elegans* development utilizing genetic models. A novel strain was generated that lacks the protein cat-1, which is responsible for vesicular sequestration of dopamine, and over-expresses the gene cat-2, which is responsible for dopamine synthesis. Thus, this novel strain (MBIA) has compounded effects on the amount of cytosolic dopamine. We characterized this strain, the parent strains used to generate MBIA, and wild-type *C. elegans* to determine what role dopamine synthesis and sequestration has on body size, development through lar...