An extracellular biochemical screen reveals that FLRTs and Unc5s mediate neuronal subtype recognition in the retina
Abstract
In the inner plexiform layer (IPL) of the mouse retina, ~70 neuronal subtypes organize their neurites into an intricate laminar structure that underlies visual processing. To find recognition proteins involved in lamination, we utilized microarray data from 13 subtypes to identify differentially-expressed extracellular proteins and performed a high-throughput biochemical screen. We identified ~50 previously-unknown receptor-ligand pairs, including new interactions among members of the FLRT and Unc5 families. These proteins show laminar-restricted IPL localization and induce attraction and/or repulsion of retinal neurites in culture, placing them in ideal position to mediate laminar targeting. Consistent with a repulsive role in arbor lamination, we observed complementary expression patterns for one interaction pair, FLRT2-Unc5C, in vivo. Starburst amacrine cells and their synaptic partners, ON-OFF direction-selective ganglion cells, express FLRT2 and are repelled by Unc5C. These data suggest that a single molecular mechanism may have been co-opted by synaptic partners to ensure joint laminar restriction.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Constance Cepko, Harvard University, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal procedures were approved by the University of California, Berkeley (Office of Laboratory Animal Care (OLAC) protocol #R308) and they conformed to the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the Public Health Service Policy and the Society for Neuroscience Policy on the Use of Animals in Neuroscience Research.
Version history
- Received: April 16, 2015
- Accepted: December 1, 2015
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 2, 2015 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: December 10, 2015 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: January 22, 2016 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2015, Visser et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 3,724
- views
-
- 894
- downloads
-
- 45
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Plant Biology
Transmembrane signaling by plant receptor kinases (RKs) has long been thought to involve reciprocal trans-phosphorylation of their intracellular kinase domains. The fact that many of these are pseudokinase domains, however, suggests that additional mechanisms must govern RK signaling activation. Non-catalytic signaling mechanisms of protein kinase domains have been described in metazoans, but information is scarce for plants. Recently, a non-catalytic function was reported for the leucine-rich repeat (LRR)-RK subfamily XIIa member EFR (elongation factor Tu receptor) and phosphorylation-dependent conformational changes were proposed to regulate signaling of RKs with non-RD kinase domains. Here, using EFR as a model, we describe a non-catalytic activation mechanism for LRR-RKs with non-RD kinase domains. EFR is an active kinase, but a kinase-dead variant retains the ability to enhance catalytic activity of its co-receptor kinase BAK1/SERK3 (brassinosteroid insensitive 1-associated kinase 1/somatic embryogenesis receptor kinase 3). Applying hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) analysis and designing homology-based intragenic suppressor mutations, we provide evidence that the EFR kinase domain must adopt its active conformation in order to activate BAK1 allosterically, likely by supporting αC-helix positioning in BAK1. Our results suggest a conformational toggle model for signaling, in which BAK1 first phosphorylates EFR in the activation loop to stabilize its active conformation, allowing EFR in turn to allosterically activate BAK1.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Cell Biology
Protein homeostasis (proteostasis) deficiency is an important contributing factor to neurological and metabolic diseases. However, how the proteostasis network orchestrates the folding and assembly of multi-subunit membrane proteins is poorly understood. Previous proteomics studies identified Hsp47 (Gene: SERPINH1), a heat shock protein in the endoplasmic reticulum lumen, as the most enriched interacting chaperone for gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptors. Here, we show that Hsp47 enhances the functional surface expression of GABAA receptors in rat neurons and human HEK293T cells. Furthermore, molecular mechanism study demonstrates that Hsp47 acts after BiP (Gene: HSPA5) and preferentially binds the folded conformation of GABAA receptors without inducing the unfolded protein response in HEK293T cells. Therefore, Hsp47 promotes the subunit-subunit interaction, the receptor assembly process, and the anterograde trafficking of GABAA receptors. Overexpressing Hsp47 is sufficient to correct the surface expression and function of epilepsy-associated GABAA receptor variants in HEK293T cells. Hsp47 also promotes the surface trafficking of other Cys-loop receptors, including nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and serotonin type 3 receptors in HEK293T cells. Therefore, in addition to its known function as a collagen chaperone, this work establishes that Hsp47 plays a critical and general role in the maturation of multi-subunit Cys-loop neuroreceptors.