Fig. 2

NemaFlex strength measurements on muscle mutants. A An animal is crawling in a NemaFlex chamber and deflecting the pillars. The red pillars are in contact with the worm body and undergoing deflection due to muscle forces. The green pillar has the maximal deflection or maximal force exerted by the animal. B The fold change in normalized muscle strength of mutants compared to wild-type animals. See “Materials and methods” section for estimation of muscle strength from maximal pillar forces and normalization. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. Significance levels are assessed with Wilcoxon rank-sum test, *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01, ***P ≤ 0.001. Sample sizes were as follows: WT had an average sample size (N) of 30. N = 36, 30, 26, 25, 31, 29 for dyc-1, uig-1, pfn-3, dim-1, atn-1. N = 20, 25, 34, 20 for zyx-1, pkn-1, tln-1, unc-95. N = 27, 29, 31 for unc-98, unc-82, unc-89. N = 36, 34, 26, 31 for unc-54(s74), unc-54(s95), unc-22(sf21), unc-22(e66). N = 27, 23, 27 for lev-11, unc-94, unc-60