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Letters to Nature
Nature 431, 578-582 (30 September 2004) | doi:10.1038/nature02893; Received 3 June 2004; Accepted 30 July 2004
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Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Karolinska Institute
- Stockholm Sweden
Bioprocess Engineer
- Praj Matrix - Praj Industries Ltd
- Pune, Maharashtra Pune-411021 India
A transmembrane protein required for acetylcholine receptor clustering in Caenorhabditis elegans
Christelle Gally1, Stefan Eimer1, Janet E. Richmond2 & Jean-Louis Bessereau1
- INSERM U.497, École Normale Supérieure, 46 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, USA
Correspondence to: Jean-Louis Bessereau1 Email: jlbesse@wotan.ens.fr).
The EMBL database accession numbers for lev-10a and lev-10b cDNAs are BN000434 and BN000435, respectively.
Abstract
Clustering neurotransmitter receptors at the synapse is crucial for efficient neurotransmission. Here we identify a Caenorhabditis elegans locus, lev-10, required for postsynaptic aggregation of ionotropic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs). lev-10 mutants were identified on the basis of weak resistance to the anthelminthic drug levamisole, a nematode-specific cholinergic agonist that activates AChRs present at neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) resulting in muscle hypercontraction and death at high concentrations1, 2, 3. In lev-10 mutants, the density of levamisole-sensitive AChRs at NMJs is markedly reduced, yet the number of functional AChRs present at the muscle cell surface remains unchanged. LEV-10 is a transmembrane protein localized to cholinergic NMJs and required in body-wall muscles for AChR clustering. We also show that the LEV-10 extracellular region, containing five predicted CUB domains and one LDLa domain, is sufficient to rescue AChR aggregation in lev-10 mutants. This suggests a mechanism for AChR clustering that relies on extracellular protein–protein interactions. Such a mechanism is likely to be evolutionarily conserved because CUB/LDL transmembrane proteins similar to LEV-10, but lacking any assigned function, are expressed in the mammalian nervous system and might be used to cluster ionotropic receptors in vertebrates.
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