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Monmita Bhar, Tanumoy Nandi, Hari Narayanan +2·Published Apr 3, 2026·10.63884/ndic.2026.0oxgzbjb
Memory formation is necessary for the survival of animals across phyla. Here, we elucidate the mechanism underlying the formation of long-term associative memory (LTAM) formed by treating Caenorhabditis elegans with a volatile chemoattractant and heat. Previous work has shown that training animals with a paradigm involving heat and isoamyl alcohol (IAA) simultaneously, causes C. elegans to lose their attraction to IAA. In this study, we elaborate on the mechanism behind this LTAM formation and suggest that during training with heat and IAA, C. elegans release extracellular vesicles (EVs) from the IL2 neurons that upon being taken up by the same trained animals or their untrained counterparts causes the organism to lose attraction to IAA. Our data suggests that the vesicles are highly specific to the training paradigms used and differ with differing cues. Finally, we show that 2,4-Xylidine is released from trained worms and upon addition to plates allows naïve animals to behave like trained animals for upto 20 hours.
MoE STARS Grant [no. MoE/STARS-1/454]; DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellowship [grant number IA/S/19/2/504649]; DBT Janaki Ammal National Women Bioscientist Award [no. BT/HRD-NBA-NWB/38/2019-20]; ANRF grants [nos. SPG/2022/000182 and CRG/2023/001950]; DBT IISc partnership program; Bayer MEDHA Fellowship; KVPY Fellowship; CSIR-JRF and CSIR-SRF fellowships
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