All feeling was not lost. Price says that in a diverse family of sensory channel proteins there may be redundancy and the ability to compensate for a defect. Monica Driscoll agrees. So it may be that if you lose one you don't lose the entire function. Sensory signaling is not the whole story for ion channel proteins.
Various insults make ion channels stay open, which can cause a cell to swell up and die.
The role of C. elegans ion channels in neurodegenerative disease is a focus of Driscoll's laboratory at Rutgers. The Iowa researchers believe that BNC1 will be turn out to be quite interesting. The gene is expressed throughout the nervous system and in the eye and the tongue, for instance. The animals look like normal mice, but we think there will be major differences down the road. Price, M.P. et al .