Eight cells were the minimum for chemical release blocks in a Cook worm model with known leaks and complete voltage responses

We tested which selective chemical release blocks can separate chemical and electrical coupling in a defined worm model. The 302-cell model used the Cook graph corrected in July 2020. Gaps were reciprocal, chemical currents had no time filter, and all inputs and voltages were calibrated. A block reduced outgoing chemical coefficients by a known fraction. We derived the exact remaining ambiguity from an incidence submatrix. With known baseline leaks, eight selected cells were necessary and sufficient to remove 26 unresolved coupling directions. With unknown leaks, the minimum was 80 cells. One joint block can use one extra complete response condition. Independent integer searches rejected all seven-cell and 79-cell designs in the respective cases. A fixed list of 132 known leak values also made the displayed eight-cell set sufficient. The known-leak minimum fell to one, one, and zero cells at contact cutoffs of three, five, and ten serial sections. Two positive synthetic circuits had identical intact responses and identical responses after seven selected blocks. Adding the eighth cell separated their responses. Nine complete-response recovery tests had maximum parameter error below 3.34e-15. Calibrated partial blocks retained exact identification but weak blocks increased error in an explicit inverse-response noise test. Unknown diagonal load changes during the block did not add coupling ambiguity. The package gives code, pinned graph facts, source checks, exact search records, numerical results, figures, and repeat instructions. These are conditional model results. We did not estimate actual worm conductances or establish experimental access to the full response matrices.

connectome · chemical release · electrical synapses · network identification · C. elegans · experiment design · incidence matrix