Glia Are Essential for Sensory Organ Function in C. elegans
Abstract
Sensory organs are composed of neurons, which convert environmental stimuli to electrical signals, and glia-like cells, whose functions are not well understood. To decipher glial roles in sensory organs, we ablated the sheath glial cell of the major sensory organ of Caenorhabditis elegans. We found that glia-ablated animals exhibit profound sensory deficits and that glia provide activities that affect neuronal morphology, behavior generation, and neuronal uptake of lipophilic dyes. To understand the molecular bases of these activities, we identified 298 genes whose messenger RNAs are glia-enriched. One gene, fig-1, encodes a labile protein with conserved thrombospondin TSP1 domains. FIG-1 protein functions extracellularly, is essential for neuronal dye uptake, and also affects behavior. Our results suggest that glia are required for multiple aspects of sensory organ function.
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We thank C. Bargmann and S. Chalasani for their generous help with G-CaMP imaging, N. Pokala for the ASH-ChR2 strain and advice on assays, H. Fares for a DT-A plasmid, S. Mazel for help with fluorescence-activated cell sorting, S. Mitani for the tm2079 allele, A. North for help with microscopy, E. Nudleman for the thermotaxis apparatus, Shaham laboratory members for comments on the project and manuscript, and C. Bargmann, P. Sengupta, O. Hobert, and E. Jorgensen for strains. S.S. is a Klingenstein Fellow in the Neurosciences.
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Published In
Science
Volume 322 | Issue 5902
31 October 2008
31 October 2008
Copyright
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 10 July 2008
Accepted: 18 September 2008
Published in print: 31 October 2008
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www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/322/5902/744/DC1
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Table S1 and S2
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