Behavioral fingerprints predict insecticide and anthelmintic mode of action
File(s)msb.202110267.pdf (6.74 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Novel invertebrate-killing compounds are required in agriculture and medicine to overcome resistance to existing treatments. Because insecticides and anthelmintics are discovered in phenotypic screens, a crucial step in the discovery process is determining the mode of action of hits. Visible whole-organism symptoms are combined with molecular and physiological data to determine mode of action. However, manual symptomology is laborious and requires symptoms that are strong enough to see by eye. Here, we use high-throughput imaging and quantitative phenotyping to measure Caenorhabditis elegans behavioral responses to compounds and train a classifier that predicts mode of action with an accuracy of 88% for a set of ten common modes of action. We also classify compounds within each mode of action to discover substructure that is not captured in broad mode-of-action labels. High-throughput imaging and automated phenotyping could therefore accelerate mode-of-action discovery in invertebrate-targeting compound development and help to refine mode-of-action categories.
Date Issued
2021-05-25
Date Acceptance
2021-04-22
Citation
Molecular Systems Biology, 2021, 17, pp.1-14
ISSN
1744-4292
Publisher
European Molecular Biology Organization
Start Page
1
End Page
14
Journal / Book Title
Molecular Systems Biology
Volume
17
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
License URL
Sponsor
European Research Council
Identifier
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/msb.202110267
Grant Number
ERC-STG-2016-714853
Subjects
C. elegans
anthelmintics
computational ethology
pesticide
phenotypic screen
Bioinformatics
0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology
0699 Other Biological Sciences
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-05-25