Neural Maintenance Roles for the Matrix Receptor Dystroglycan and the Nuclear Anchorage Complex in Caenorhabditis elegans

摘要

Recent studies in Caenorhabditis elegans have revealed specific neural maintenance mechanisms that protect soma and neurites against mispositioning due to displacement stresses, such as muscle contraction. We report that C. elegans dystroglycan (DG) functions to maintain the position of during late embryonic and larval development. In the absence of the cell bodies of multiple classes are frequently displaced anterior of their normal positions. Early but not later embryonic panneural expression of rescues positional maintenance, suggesting that dystroglycan is required for establishment of a critical maintenance pathway that persists throughout later developmental stages. Lumbar neural maintenance requires only a membrane-tethered N-terminal domain of and may involve a novel extracellular partner for dystroglycan. A genetic screen for similar maintenance mutants revealed a role for the nesprin/SYNE family protein as well as for the extracellular protein , previously implicated in maintenance. The involvement of reveals a previously unknown role for nucleus–cytoskeleton interactions in neural maintenance. Genetic analysis indicates that position is maintained in late embryos by parallel / and –dependent pathways, and in larvae by separate and href="http://www.wormbase.org/db/get?name=ANC-1;class=Gene" data-ga-action="click_feat_suppl" ref="reftype=extlink&article-id=3316649&issue-id=208314&journal-id=301&FROM=Article%7CFront%20Matter&TO=External%7CLink%7CURI" target="_blank">ANC-1 pathways. The effect of muscle paralysis on late embryonic- or larval-stage maintenance defects in mutants indicates that href="http://www.wormbase.org/db/get?name=lumbar%20neuron;class=Anatomy_name" data-ga-action="click_feat_suppl" ref="reftype=extlink&article-id=3316649&issue-id=208314&journal-id=301&FROM=Article%7CFront%20Matter&TO=External%7CLink%7CURI" target="_blank">lumbar neurons are subject to both muscle contraction-dependent and contraction-independent displacement stresses, and that different maintenance pathways may protect against specific types of displacement stress.