Figure 1. Characterization of egg-laying behavior in two C. elegans K2P channel mutants: A. Graphic representation of CRISPR full knockout alleles of
twk-26(
ibt22) and
twk-46(
ibt17) (scale bar: 100bp). B. Quantification of the number of eggs laid on food within 2 hours (N2: n=69;
twk-26: n=70;
twk-46: n=61 animals) and off food within 1 hour (N2: n=55;
twk-26: n=63;
twk-46: n=62 animals). Statistical significance was evaluated using a one-way ANOVA test, ns: p>0.05. C. Quantification of the number of unlaid eggs within uterus (N2: n=72;
twk-26: n=71;
twk-46: n=70 animals). Statistical significance (one-way ANOVA test), ns: p>0.05. D. Quantitative analysis of the timing of egg-laying events. Individual animals were tracked on food for 6 hours, and the intervals between egg-laying events were measured. The left panel represents the histogram of log intervals of 10 individual animals of each genotype, with the maximum likelihood estimation (Waggoner et al., 1998; Zhou et al, 1998) of intra- and inter-cluster time constants as well as three parameters of the two-state egg-laying model (p: probability of egg-laying events during active egg-laying phase, λ1: rate constant of inactive egg-laying phase, and λ2: rate constant of active egg-laying phase). The blue and green dashed lines indicate the intra- and inter-cluster time constants, respectively. The right panel plots the inter- and inter-cluster time constants determined by the same method per individual animal. Estimated parameters were not statistically different between genotypes according to Brown-Forsythe and Welch ANOVA, with Dunnett's post-hoc test. E. Quantification of the number of laid eggs in response to different exogenous serotonin concentrations within 1 hour in the absence of food (n=15 animals for each genotype). Significance was tested using an Aligned Ranked two-way ANOVA test, ns: p>0.05. For all graphs, error bars represent standard error of the mean (SEM).