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How can moving a receptor protein to a different cell reverse Caenorhabditis elegans' response to a chemical?

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A pine grosbeak with pink and gray plumage perches on a branch, eating red berries among autumn foliage. — Chemoreception Animals, such as this pine grosbeak, use chemoreception to respond to chemicals that can be tasted and smelled in their environments. Many of these chemicals affect behaviors such as food preference and defense.

In Caenorhabditis elegans, the behavioral response elicited by a specific chemical is not determined solely by the receptor protein itself, but by the nature of the connections that the specific chemoreceptor cell makes with other components of the nervous system.1

Because the number of chemosensory cells in C. elegans is limited, individual cells must often express multiple types of receptor proteins. When a particular receptor protein is experimentally moved from one receptor cell to another, the chemical signal is processed through a different neural pathway. Consequently, the organism’s behavioral response can be reversed—shifting from attraction to repulsion—because the new host cell is wired to trigger a different motor output in response to the same stimulus.1