In late October 2019, a Harvard University-led team have elaborated the molecular and neural mechanisms of pheromone-related learning behaviors in C. elegans. A pheromone is known as a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species.
The research, which was published in Neuron, shows that pheromone exposure inhibit C. elegans from learning to avoid low-quality pathogenic food by disrupting balanced signals of two insulin-like peptides that is critical for learning to facilitate food intake when population density is high.
