Fig. 1: Presynaptic UNC-43/CaMKII regulates postsynaptic GABAAR abundance at GABAergic synapses.
a Schematic representation of the xj1024 locus. A tagRFP coding sequence was inserted before the first exon shared by UNC-49A, UNC-49B, and UNC-49C. TagRFP consequently labels the UNC-49A, UNC-49B, and UNC-49C proteins. b The protein structure of UNC-43 is shown on top. The js125 mutation has a 17 kb deletion (upstream of the promoter to the 10th exon) that deletes most of the coding sequences. The kinase-dead mutant unc-43 (k42r) has a point mutation and causes the K42R coding variant. The gain-of-function unc-43 (gf) (n498, gain of function) mutant has a point mutation that causes single amino acid substitution E108K. c The puncta fluorescence intensity marked by TagRFP-UNC-49 (under unc-49 own promoter) in dorsal nerve cord axons was decreased in the unc-43 mutants. This defect was rescued by transgenic expression of UNC-43 in GABAergic motor neurons (G. rescue), but not by UNC-43 expression in cholinergic neurons (C. rescue) or in body-wall muscles (M. rescue). Representative images (left, scale bar 10 μm, Pseudo-color: Red Hot) and mean puncta intensities +/− SEM (right, Ns represent the number of animals tested) are shown. One-way ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni’s multiple comparison test. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, n.s. not significant. d GABAAR fluorescence intensity is decreased in the unc-43 (k42r) kinase-dead mutants, and increased in the unc-43(gf) (n498, gain of function) mutants. Representative images (left, scale bar 10 μm, Pseudo-color: Red Hot) and mean puncta intensities + /- SEM (right, Ns represent the number of animals tested) are shown. Kruskal–Wallis test with post-hoc Dunn’s test. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, n.s. not significant. For c, d, source data are provided as a Source Data file.
