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Castells-Nobau A, Eidhof I, Fenckova M, Brenman-Suttner DB, Scheffer-de Gooyert JM, Christine S, Schellevis RL, van der Laan K, Quentin C, van Ninhuijs L, Hofmann F, Ejsmont R, Fisher SE, Kramer JM, Sigrist SJ, Simon AF, Schenck A. Conserved regulation of neurodevelopmental processes and behavior by FoxP in Drosophila. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0211652. [PMID: 30753188 PMCID: PMC6372147 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211652] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/16/2019] [Accepted: 01/17/2019] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
FOXP proteins form a subfamily of evolutionarily conserved transcription factors involved in the development and functioning of several tissues, including the central nervous system. In humans, mutations in FOXP1 and FOXP2 have been implicated in cognitive deficits including intellectual disability and speech disorders. Drosophila exhibits a single ortholog, called FoxP, but due to a lack of characterized mutants, our understanding of the gene remains poor. Here we show that the dimerization property required for mammalian FOXP function is conserved in Drosophila. In flies, FoxP is enriched in the adult brain, showing strong expression in ~1000 neurons of cholinergic, glutamatergic and GABAergic nature. We generate Drosophila loss-of-function mutants and UAS-FoxP transgenic lines for ectopic expression, and use them to characterize FoxP function in the nervous system. At the cellular level, we demonstrate that Drosophila FoxP is required in larvae for synaptic morphogenesis at axonal terminals of the neuromuscular junction and for dendrite development of dorsal multidendritic sensory neurons. In the developing brain, we find that FoxP plays important roles in α-lobe mushroom body formation. Finally, at a behavioral level, we show that Drosophila FoxP is important for locomotion, habituation learning and social space behavior of adult flies. Our work shows that Drosophila FoxP is important for regulating several neurodevelopmental processes and behaviors that are related to human disease or vertebrate disease model phenotypes. This suggests a high degree of functional conservation with vertebrate FOXP orthologues and established flies as a model system for understanding FOXP related pathologies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Castells-Nobau
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Ilse Eidhof
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Michaela Fenckova
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | | | - Jolanda M. Scheffer-de Gooyert
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Sheren Christine
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Rosa L. Schellevis
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Kiran van der Laan
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Christine Quentin
- Genetics, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lisa van Ninhuijs
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Falko Hofmann
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Radoslaw Ejsmont
- Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), Dresden, Germany
| | - Simon E. Fisher
- Language and Genetics Department, Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Jamie M. Kramer
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Stephan J. Sigrist
- Genetics, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Anne F. Simon
- Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
| | - Annette Schenck
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
- * E-mail:
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Nijhof B, Castells-Nobau A, Wolf L, Scheffer-de Gooyert JM, Monedero I, Torroja L, Coromina L, van der Laak JAWM, Schenck A. A New Fiji-Based Algorithm That Systematically Quantifies Nine Synaptic Parameters Provides Insights into Drosophila NMJ Morphometry. PLoS Comput Biol 2016; 12:e1004823. [PMID: 26998933 PMCID: PMC4801422 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004823] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/02/2014] [Accepted: 02/19/2016] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
The morphology of synapses is of central interest in neuroscience because of the intimate relation with synaptic efficacy. Two decades of gene manipulation studies in different animal models have revealed a repertoire of molecules that contribute to synapse development. However, since such studies often assessed only one, or at best a few, morphological features at a given synapse, it remained unaddressed how different structural aspects relate to one another. Furthermore, such focused and sometimes only qualitative approaches likely left many of the more subtle players unnoticed. Here, we present the image analysis algorithm 'Drosophila_NMJ_Morphometrics', available as a Fiji-compatible macro, for quantitative, accurate and objective synapse morphometry of the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a well-established glutamatergic model synapse. We developed this methodology for semi-automated multiparametric analyses of NMJ terminals immunolabeled for the commonly used markers Dlg1 and Brp and showed that it also works for Hrp, Csp and Syt. We demonstrate that gender, genetic background and identity of abdominal body segment consistently and significantly contribute to variability in our data, suggesting that controlling for these parameters is important to minimize variability in quantitative analyses. Correlation and principal component analyses (PCA) were performed to investigate which morphometric parameters are inter-dependent and which ones are regulated rather independently. Based on nine acquired parameters, we identified five morphometric groups: NMJ size, geometry, muscle size, number of NMJ islands and number of active zones. Based on our finding that the parameters of the first two principal components hardly correlated with each other, we suggest that different molecular processes underlie these two morphometric groups. Our study sets the stage for systems morphometry approaches at the well-studied Drosophila NMJ.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bonnie Nijhof
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Anna Castells-Nobau
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Louis Wolf
- Microscopical Imaging Centre (MIC), Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Jolanda M. Scheffer-de Gooyert
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Ignacio Monedero
- Department of Biology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
| | - Laura Torroja
- Department of Biology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Lluis Coromina
- Research Group on Statistics, Econometrics and Health (GRECS) and CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), University of Girona, Girona, Spain
| | - Jeroen A. W. M. van der Laak
- Microscopical Imaging Centre (MIC), Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
- Department of Pathology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Annette Schenck
- Department of Human Genetics, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
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