Abstract
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a powerful model organism to systematically analyze the functions of genes of interest in vivo. Especially, C. elegans nervous system is suitable for morphological and functional analyses of neuronal genes due to its optical transparency of the body and the well-established anatomy including neural connections. The C. elegans ortholog of Parkinson’s disease-associated gene LRRK2, named lrk-1, has been shown to play a role in the regulation of axonal morphology in a subset of neurons. Here I describe the detailed methodologies for the assessment of LRK-1/LRRK2 function as well as the analysis of genetic interaction involving lrk-1/LRRK2 by performing live imaging of C. elegans mechanosenrory neurons.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Steger M, Tonelli F, Ito G, Davies P, Trost M, Vetter M, Wachter S, Lorentzen E, Duddy G, Wilson S, Baptista MA, Fiske BK, Fell MJ, Morrow JA, Reith AD, Alessi DR, Mann M (2016) Phosphoproteomics reveals that Parkinson’s disease kinase LRRK2 regulates a subset of Rab GTPases. elife 5:e12813
MacLeod D, Dowman J, Hammond R, Leete T, Inoue K, Abeliovich A (2006) The familial parkinsonism gene LRRK2 regulates neurite process morphology. Neuron 52(4):587–593
Plowey ED, Cherra SJ 3rd, Liu YJ, Chu CT (2008) Role of autophagy in G2019S-LRRK2-associated neurite shortening in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells. J Neurochem 105(3):1048–1056
Chan D, Citro A, Cordy JM, Shen GC, Wolozin B (2011) Rac1 protein rescues neurite retraction caused by G2019S leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2). J Biol Chem 286(18):16140–16149
Winner B, Melrose HL, Zhao C, Hinkle KM, Yue M, Kent C, Braithwaite AT, Ogholikhan S, Aigner R, Winkler J, Farrer MJ, Gage FH (2011) Adult neurogenesis and neurite outgrowth are impaired in LRRK2 G2019S mice. Neurobiol Dis 41(3):706–716
MacLeod DA, Rhinn H, Kuwahara T, Zolin A, Di Paolo G, McCabe BD, Marder KS, Honig LS, Clark LN, Small SA, Abeliovich A (2013) RAB7L1 interacts with LRRK2 to modify intraneuronal protein sorting and Parkinson’s disease risk. Neuron 77(3):425–439
Cookson MR (2016) Cellular functions of LRRK2 implicate vesicular trafficking pathways in Parkinson’s disease. Biochem Soc Trans 44(6):1603–1610
Bonet-Ponce L, Cookson MR (2019) The role of Rab GTPases in the pathobiology of Parkinson’ disease. Curr Opin Cell Biol 59:73–80
Eguchi T, Kuwahara T, Sakurai M, Komori T, Fujimoto T, Ito G, Yoshimura SI, Harada A, Fukuda M, Koike M, Iwatsubo T (2018) LRRK2 and its substrate Rab GTPases are sequentially targeted onto stressed lysosomes and maintain their homeostasis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 115(39):E9115–E9124
Kuwahara T, Funakawa K, Komori T, Sakurai M, Yoshii G, Eguchi T, Fukuda M, Iwatsubo T (2020) Roles of lysosomotropic agents on LRRK2 activation and Rab10 phosphorylation. Neurobiol Dis 145:105081
Kuwahara T, Iwatsubo T (2020) The emerging functions of LRRK2 and Rab GTPases in the endolysosomal system. Front Neurosci 14:227
Tong Y, Yamaguchi H, Giaime E, Boyle S, Kopan R, Kelleher RJ 3rd, Shen J (2010) Loss of leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 causes impairment of protein degradation pathways, accumulation of alpha-synuclein, and apoptotic cell death in aged mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107(21):9879–9884
Herzig MC, Kolly C, Persohn E, Theil D, Schweizer T, Hafner T, Stemmelen C, Troxler TJ, Schmid P, Danner S, Schnell CR, Mueller M, Kinzel B, Grevot A, Bolognani F, Stirn M, Kuhn RR, Kaupmann K, van der Putten PH, Rovelli G, Shimshek DR (2011) LRRK2 protein levels are determined by kinase function and are crucial for kidney and lung homeostasis in mice. Hum Mol Genet 20(21):4209–4223
Volta M, Melrose H (2017) LRRK2 mouse models: dissecting the behavior, striatal neurochemistry and neurophysiology of PD pathogenesis. Biochem Soc Trans 45(1):113–122
Seegobin SP, Heaton GR, Liang D, Choi I, Blanca Ramirez M, Tang B, Yue Z (2020) Progress in LRRK2-associated Parkinson’s disease animal models. Front Neurosci 14:674
Brenner S (1974) The genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans. Genetics 77(1):71–94
Shaye DD, Greenwald I (2011) OrthoList: a compendium of C. elegans genes with human orthologs. PLoS One 6(5):e20085
Kuwahara T, Inoue K, D’Agati VD, Fujimoto T, Eguchi T, Saha S, Wolozin B, Iwatsubo T, Abeliovich A (2016) LRRK2 and RAB7L1 coordinately regulate axonal morphology and lysosome integrity in diverse cellular contexts. Sci Rep 6:29945
Grill B, Bienvenut WV, Brown HM, Ackley BD, Quadroni M, Jin Y (2007) C. elegans RPM-1 regulates axon termination and synaptogenesis through the Rab GEF GLO-4 and the Rab GTPase GLO-1. Neuron 55(4):587–601
Acknowledgments
I thank Drs. Asa Abeliovich, Takeshi Iwatsubo and their colleagues for their support during the establishment of the described methods. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant number 19K07816.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Kuwahara, T. (2021). The Functional Assessment of LRRK2 in Caenorhabditis elegans Mechanosensory Neurons. In: Imai, Y. (eds) Experimental Models of Parkinson’s Disease. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2322. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1495-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1495-2_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-1494-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-1495-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols