PARIS, an optogenetic method for functionally mapping gap junctions
Abstract
Cell-cell communication via gap junctions regulates a wide range of physiological processes by enabling the direct intercellular electrical and chemical coupling. However, the in vivo distribution and function of gap junctions remain poorly understood, partly due to the lack of non-invasive tools with both cell-type specificity and high spatiotemporal resolution. Here we developed PARIS (pairing actuators and receivers to optically isolate gap junctions), a new fully genetically encoded tool for measuring the cell-specific gap junctional coupling (GJC). PARIS successfully enabled monitoring of GJC in several cultured cell lines under physiologically relevant conditions and in distinct genetically defined neurons in Drosophila brain, with ~10-sec temporal resolution and sub-cellular spatial resolution. These results demonstrate that PARIS is a robust, highly sensitive tool for mapping functional gap junctions and study their regulation in both health and disease.
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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files
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Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Projects 31371442)
- Yulong Li
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Projects 31671118)
- Yulong Li
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Projects 31630035)
- Shi-Qiang Wang
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (Grant 2015CB856402)
- Yulong Li
Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (Grant 2016YFA0500401)
- Shi-Qiang Wang
Beijing Brain Initiation (Z181100001518004)
- Yulong Li
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Wu 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.
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