Worm Circuitry Explorer
The Worm Circuitry Explorer allows interactive exploration of the C. elegans connectome.
Usage
- Hover
- Highlights a neuron's immediate neighborhood.
- Click
- Selects a node and pins its metadata in the panel on the right.
- Drag
- Moves and pins a node to a fixed position.
- Dbl-click
- Releases a pinned node.
Subcircuits
Choose source and target neuron groups, constrain path length and connection thresholds, then fetch the subgraph connecting them. Expand adds back all direct connections among the fetched neurons.
About
Caenorhabditis elegans is a nematode worm of particular interest to many researchers as it was the first multicellular organism to have its whole genome sequenced, and remains the only organism whose connectome has been completed in its entirety.
The Worm Circuitry Explorer allows visual and interactive exploration of this connectome. Its main purpose is to help researchers and modelers inspect subcircuits that may underlie particular worm behaviors.
Data Sources
The explorer covers the connectivity between the 279 somatic neurons whose interconnections are best established. The core connectivity is based on Chen et al. (2006) and Varshney et al. (2011), supplemented with position data from the Dynamic Connectome project, neuron classes from WormWeb, and sensory annotations maintained locally in this repository.
Visualization
The graph is rendered with modern D3 in the browser. Nodes can be selected to inspect metadata, dragged to pin positions, filtered by degree and connection thresholds, and exported in multiple graph formats.
References
- Nikhil Bhatla, WormWeb.org
- Chen, Hall, and Chklovskii (2006). Wiring optimization can relate neuronal structure and function. PNAS 103: 4723-4728.
- Choe, McCormick, and Koh (2004). Network connectivity analysis on the temporally augmented C. elegans web: A pilot study.
- Varshney, Chen, Paniagua, Hall and Chklovskii (2011). Structural properties of the C. elegans neuronal network.
- WormAtlas, Altun et al., 2002-2015.