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The Journal of Neuroscience, March 23, 2005, 25(12):3199-3208; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4201-04.2005
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Cellular/Molecular
An Essential Drosophila Glutamate Receptor Subunit That Functions in Both Central Neuropil and Neuromuscular Junction
David E. Featherstone,1
Emma Rushton,2
Jeffrey Rohrbough,2
Faith Liebl,1
Julie Karr,1
Qi Sheng,1
Christopher K. Rodesch,3 and
Kendal Broadie2,3,4
1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, 2Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, 3Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, and 4Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, Nashville, Tennessee 37235
A Drosophila forward genetic screen for mutants with defective synaptic development identified bad reception (brec). Homozygous brec mutants are embryonic lethal, paralyzed, and show no detectable synaptic transmission at the glutamatergic neuromuscular junction (NMJ). Genetic mapping, complementation tests, and genomic sequencing show that brec mutations disrupt a previously uncharacterized ionotropic glutamate receptor subunit, named here "GluRIID." GluRIID is expressed in the postsynaptic domain of the NMJ, as well as widely throughout the synaptic neuropil of the CNS. In the NMJ of null brec mutants, all known glutamate receptor subunits are undetectable by immunocytochemistry, and all functional glutamate receptors are eliminated. Thus, we conclude that GluRIID is essential for the assembly and/or stabilization of glutamate receptors in the NMJ. In null brec mutant embryos, the frequency of periodic excitatory currents in motor neurons is significantly reduced, demonstrating that CNS motor pattern activity is regulated by GluRIID. Although synaptic development and molecular differentiation appear otherwise unperturbed in null mutants, viable hypomorphic brec mutants display dramatically undergrown NMJs by the end of larval development, suggesting that GluRIID-dependent central pattern activity regulates peripheral synaptic growth. These studies reveal GluRIID as a newly identified glutamate receptor subunit that is essential for glutamate receptor assembly/stabilization in the peripheral NMJ and required for properly patterned motor output in the CNS.
Key words: synapse; postsynaptic; synaptogenesis; glutamatergic; glutamate receptor; subunit; embryo; pattern generator
Received Oct 8, 2004;
revised January 24, 2005;
accepted January 24, 2005.
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