Publications by authors named "Jana Fiona Liewald"
Acutely inducing degradation enables studying the function of essential proteins. Available techniques target proteins post-translationally, via ubiquitin or by fusing destabilizing domains (degrons), and in some cases degradation is controllable by small molecules. Yet, they are comparably slow, possibly inducing compensatory changes, and do not allow localized protein depletion.
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- Synaptic vesicles (SVs) are crucial for neurotransmitter release and recycling, and this study presents an optical method to identify genes involved in SV recycling using C. elegans as a model organism.
- By stimulating motoneurons and imaging muscle Ca2+ dynamics, researchers discovered distinct patterns in mutants affecting SV recycling that reflected increased synaptic fatigue during stimulation.
- The study also explored RNA interference (RNAi) screening for SV recycling genes, finding several genes related to cholinergic transmission that showed similar Ca2+ dynamics to known SV recycling genes, leading to potential future investigations.
Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) is widely used for rapid photodepolarization of neurons, yet, as it requires high-intensity blue light for activation, it is not suited for long-term in vivo applications, e.g. for manipulations of behavior, or photoactivation of neurons during development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhotoactivated adenylyl cyclase α (PACα) was originally isolated from the flagellate Euglena gracilis. Following stimulation by blue light it causes a rapid increase in cAMP levels. In the present study, we expressed PACα in cholinergic neurons of Caenorhabditis elegans.
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