Abstract
Piccolo is an organizational component of the presynaptic active zone, a specialized region of nerve terminals where synaptic vesicles fuse and release their neurotransmitter contents. Alternative splicing (AS) of the mouse Piccolo gene (PCLO) produces two primary splice isoforms: isoform-1 that includes two C2 domains (C2A and C2B) and isoform-2 with only C2A. Genome-wide association studies have identified variations located in or near the C2A domain of human Piccolo that predispose individuals to affective disorders and in rare cases leads to altered brain development. In zebrafish a genome duplication event led to the generation of PCLO-a and PCLO-b: gene paralogs that display strikingly similar genomic organization with other PCLO orthologs. Given this conservation in genomic structure, it is likely that AS patterns of zebrafish PCLO paralogs are similar to mammalian PCLO. We used a RT-PCR strategy to identify four zebrafish isoforms generated from zebrafish PCLO-a and PCLO-b that are equivalent to mouse Piccolo isoform-1 and isoform-2. Additionally, we identified an exon skipping event that leads to exclusion of a 27 nucleotide exon in both zebrafish Piccolo-a and Piccolo-b. Elimination of this exon in mammalian Piccolo alters the calcium binding property of the C2A domain. We also measured transcriptional levels of mouse and zebrafish Piccolo splice variants and demonstrate that despite similarities in AS, there are quantitative differences in gene expression. Our results indicate that AS of Piccolo is similar across diverse taxa and further support the use of zebrafish to study the role of Piccolo in neurodevelopment and synaptic signaling.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abascal F, Tress ML, Valencia A (2015) The evolutionary fate of alternatively spliced homologous exons after gene duplication. Genome Biol Evol 7:1392–1403
Ackermann F, Waites CL, Garner CC (2015) Presynaptic active zones in invertebrates and vertebrates. EMBO Rep 8:923–938
Ahmed MY, Chioza BA, Rajab A, Schmitz-Abe K, Al-Khayat A, Al-Turki S, Baple EL, Patton MA, Al-Memar AY, Hurles ME et al (2015) Loss of PCLO function underlies pontocerebellar hypoplasia type III. Neurology 84:1745–1750
Altrock WD, tom Dieck S, Sokolov M, Meyer AC, Sigler A, Brakebusch C, Fassler R, Richter K, Boeckers TM, Potschka H et al (2003) Functional inactivation of a fraction of excitatory synapses in mice deficient for the active zone protein bassoon. Neuron 37:787–800
Altschmied J, Delfgaauw J, Wilde B, Duschl J, Bouneau L, Volff JN, Schartl M (2002) Subfunctionalization of duplicate mitf genes associated with differential degeneration of alternative exons in fish. Genetics 161:259–267
Aragam N, Wang KS, Pan Y (2011) Genome-wide association analysis of gender differences in major depressive disorder in the Netherlands NESDA and NTR population-based samples. J Affect Disord 133:516–521
Artamonova II, Gelfand MS (2007) Comparative genomics and evolution of alternative splicing: the pessimists’ science. Chem Rev 107:3407–3430
Barbosa-Morais NL, Irimia M, Pan Q, Xiong HY, Gueroussov S, Lee LJ, Slobodeniuc V, Kutter C, Watt S, Colak R et al (2012) The evolutionary landscape of alternative splicing in vertebrate species. Science 338:1587–1593
Cases-Langhoff C, Voss B, Garner AM, Appeltauer U, Takei K, Kindler S, Veh RW, De Camilli P, Gundelfinger ED, Garner CC (1996) Piccolo, a novel 420 kDa protein associated with the presynaptic cytomatrix. Eur J Cell Biol 69:214–223
Chapman ER (2008) How does synaptotagmin trigger neurotransmitter release? Annu Rev Biochem 77:615–641
Choi KH, Higgs BW, Wendland JR, Song J, McMahon FJ, Webster MJ (2011) Gene expression and genetic variation data implicate PCLO in bipolar disorder. Biol Psychiatry 69:353–359
Easley-Neal C, Fierro J Jr, Buchanan J, Washbourne P (2013) Late recruitment of synapsin to nascent synapses is regulated by Cdk5. Cell Rep 3:1199–1212
Fenster SD, Garner CC (2002) Gene structure and genetic localization of the PCLO gene encoding the presynaptic active zone protein Piccolo. Int J Dev Neurosci 20:161–171
Fenster SD, Chung WJ, Zhai R, Cases-Langhoff C, Voss B, Garner AM, Kaempf U, Kindler S, Gundelfinger ED, Garner CC (2000) Piccolo, a presynaptic zinc finger protein structurally related to bassoon. Neuron 25:203–214
Fenster SD, Kessels MM, Qualmann B, Chung WJ, Nash J, Gundelfinger ED, Garner CC (2003) Interactions between Piccolo and the actin/dynamin-binding protein Abp1 link vesicle endocytosis to presynaptic active zones. J Biol Chem 278:20268–20277
Fernandez-Chacon R, Konigstorfer A, Gerber SH, Garcia J, Matos MF, Stevens CF, Brose N, Rizo J, Rosenmund C, Sudhof TC (2001) Synaptotagmin I functions as a calcium regulator of release probability. Nature 410:41–49
Fraga D, Meulia T, Fenster S (2012) Real-time PCR: unit 10.3. In: Current protocols essential laboratory techniques, 2nd edn. Wiley-Blackwell, New Jersey, pp 10.3.1–10.3.40
Furukawa-Hibi Y, Nitta A, Fukumitsu H, Somiya H, Furukawa S, Nabeshima T, Yamada K (2010) Overexpression of piccolo C2A domain induces depression-like behavior in mice. NeuroReport 21:1177–1181
Garcia J, Gerber SH, Sugita S, Sudhof TC, Rizo J (2004) A conformational switch in the Piccolo C2A domain regulated by alternative splicing. Nat Struct Mol Biol 11:45–53
Gerber SH, Garcia J, Rizo J, Sudhof TC (2001) An unusual C(2)-domain in the active-zone protein piccolo: implications for Ca(2 +) regulation of neurotransmitter release. EMBO J 20:1605–1619
Hadley D, Murphy T, Valladares O, Hannenhalli S, Ungar L, Kim J, Bucan M (2006) Patterns of sequence conservation in presynaptic neural genes. Genome Biol 7:R105
Hek K, Mulder CL, Luijendijk HJ, van Duijn CM, Hofman A, Uitterlinden AG, Tiemeier H (2010) The PCLO gene and depressive disorders: replication in a population-based study. Hum Mol Genet 19:731–734
Howe K, Clark MD, Torroja CF, Torrance J, Berthelot C, Muffato M, Collins JE, Humphray S, McLaren K, Matthews L et al (2013) The zebrafish reference genome sequence and its relationship to the human genome. Nature 496:498–503
Innan H, Kondrashov F (2010) The evolution of gene duplications: classifying and distinguishing between models. Nat Rev Genet 11:97–108
Johnson GV, Jenkins SM (1999) Tau protein in normal and Alzheimer’s disease brain. J Alzheimers Dis 1:307–328
Kim S, Ko J, Shin H, Lee JR, Lim C, Han JH, Altrock WD, Garner CC, Gundelfinger ED, Premont RT et al (2003) The GIT family of proteins forms multimers and associates with the presynaptic cytomatrix protein Piccolo. J Biol Chem 278:6291–6300
Lambert MJ, Olsen KG, Cooper CD (2014) Gene duplication followed by exon structure divergence substitutes for alternative splicing in zebrafish. Gene 546:271–276
Landsverk ML, Weiser DC, Hannibal MC, Kimelman D (2010) Alternative splicing of sept9a and sept9b in zebrafish produces multiple mRNA transcripts expressed throughout development. PLoS One 5:e10712
Leal-Ortiz S, Waites CL, Terry-Lorenzo R, Zamorano P, Gundelfinger ED, Garner CC (2008) Piccolo modulation of Synapsin1a dynamics regulates synaptic vesicle exocytosis. J Cell Biol 181:831–846
Leung LC, Wang GX, Mourrain P (2013) Imaging zebrafish neural circuitry from whole brain to synapse. Front Neural Circuits 7:76
Lu J, Peatman E, Wang W, Yang Q, Abernathy J, Wang S, Kucuktas H, Liu Z (2010) Alternative splicing in teleost fish genomes: same-species and cross-species analysis and comparisons. Mol Genet Genomics 283:531–539
Madgwick A, Fort P, Hanson PS, Thibault P, Gaudreau MC, Lutfalla G, Moroy T, Abou Elela S, Chaudhry B, Elliott DJ et al (2015) Neural differentiation modulates the vertebrate brain specific splicing program. PLoS One 10:e0125998
McIlhatton MA, Burrows JF, Donaghy PG, Chanduloy S, Johnston PG, Russell SE (2001) Genomic organization, complex splicing pattern and expression of a human septin gene on chromosome 17q25.3. Oncogene 20:5930–5939
Moussavi Nik SH, Newman M, Ganesan S, Chen M, Martins R, Verdile G, Lardelli M (2014) Hypoxia alters expression of Zebrafish Microtubule-associated protein Tau (mapta, maptb) gene transcripts. BMC Res Notes 7:767
Mukherjee K, Yang X, Gerber SH, Kwon HB, Ho A, Castillo PE, Liu X, Sudhof TC (2010) Piccolo and bassoon maintain synaptic vesicle clustering without directly participating in vesicle exocytosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:6504–6509
Nalefski EA, Falke JJ (1996) The C2 domain calcium-binding motif: structural and functional diversity. Protein Sci 5:2375–2390
Nonet ML (2012) A window into domain amplification through Piccolo in teleost fish. G3 (Bethesda) 2:1325–1339
Pan Q, Shai O, Lee LJ, Frey BJ, Blencowe BJ (2008) Deep surveying of alternative splicing complexity in the human transcriptome by high-throughput sequencing. Nat Genet 40:1413–1415
Posner M, Skiba J, Brown M, Liang JO, Nussbaum J, Prior H (2013) Loss of the small heat shock protein alphaA-crystallin does not lead to detectable defects in early zebrafish lens development. Exp Eye Res 116:227–233
Rizo J, Sudhof TC (1998) C2-domains, structure and function of a universal Ca2+-binding domain. J Biol Chem 273:15879–15882
Schoch S, Gundelfinger ED (2006) Molecular organization of the presynaptic active zone. Cell Tissue Res 326:379–391
Seo S, Takayama K, Uno K, Ohi K, Hashimoto R, Nishizawa D, Ikeda K, Ozaki N, Nabeshima T, Miyamoto Y et al (2013) Functional analysis of deep intronic SNP rs13438494 in intron 24 of PCLO gene. PLoS One 8:e76960
Sullivan PF, de Geus EJ, Willemsen G, James MR, Smit JH, Zandbelt T, Arolt V, Baune BT, Blackwood D, Cichon S et al (2009) Genome-wide association for major depressive disorder: a possible role for the presynaptic protein piccolo. Mol Psychiatry 14:359–375
Tao-Cheng JH (2007) Ultrastructural localization of active zone and synaptic vesicle proteins in a preassembled multi-vesicle transport aggregate. Neuroscience 150:575–584
tom Dieck S, Sanmarti-Vila L, Langnaese K, Richter K, Kindler S, Soyke A, Wex H, Smalla KH, Kampf U, Franzer JT et al (1998) Bassoon, a novel zinc-finger CAG/glutamine-repeat protein selectively localized at the active zone of presynaptic nerve terminals. J Cell Biol 142:499–509
Treutlein B, Gokce O, Quake SR, Sudhof TC (2014) Cartography of neurexin alternative splicing mapped by single-molecule long-read mRNA sequencing. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111:E1291–E1299
Ullrich B, Ushkaryov YA, Sudhof TC (1995) Cartography of neurexins: more than 1000 isoforms generated by alternative splicing and expressed in distinct subsets of neurons. Neuron 14:497–507
Uno K, Nishizawa D, Seo S, Takayama K, Matsumura S, Sakai N, Ohi K, Nabeshima T, Hashimoto R, Ozaki N et al (2015) The piccolo intronic single nucleotide polymorphism rs13438494 regulates dopamine and serotonin uptake and shows associations with dependence-like behavior in genomic association study. Curr Mol Med 15:265–274
Verbeek EC, Bakker IM, Bevova MR, Bochdanovits Z, Rizzu P, Sondervan D, Willemsen G, de Geus EJ, Smit JH, Penninx BW et al (2012) A fine-mapping study of 7 top scoring genes from a GWAS for major depressive disorder. PLoS One 7:e37384
Verbeek EC, Bevova MR, Bochdanovits Z, Rizzu P, Bakker IM, Uithuisje T, De Geus EJ, Smit JH, Penninx BW, Boomsma DI et al (2013) Resequencing three candidate genes for major depressive disorder in a dutch cohort. PLoS One 8:e79921
Volff JN (2005) Genome evolution and biodiversity in teleost fish. Heredity (Edinb) 94:280–294
Wagh D, Terry-Lorenzo R, Waites CL, Leal-Ortiz SA, Maas C, Reimer RJ, Garner CC (2015) Piccolo directs activity dependent f-actin assembly from presynaptic active zones via daam1. PLoS One 10:e0120093
Waites CL, Leal-Ortiz SA, Andlauer TF, Sigrist SJ, Garner CC (2011) Piccolo regulates the dynamic assembly of presynaptic F-actin. J Neurosci 31:14250–14263
Waites CL, Leal-Ortiz SA, Okerlund N, Dalke H, Fejtova A, Altrock WD, Gundelfinger ED, Garner CC (2013) Bassoon and Piccolo maintain synapse integrity by regulating protein ubiquitination and degradation. EMBO J 32:954–969
Wang X, Kibschull M, Laue MM, Lichte B, Petrasch-Parwez E, Kilimann MW (1999) Aczonin, a 550-kD putative scaffolding protein of presynaptic active zones, shares homology regions with Rim and Bassoon and binds profilin. J Cell Biol 147:151–162
Woudstra S, Bochdanovits Z, van Tol MJ, Veltman DJ, Zitman FG, van Buchem MA, van der Wee NJ, Opmeer EM, Demenescu LR, Aleman A et al (2012) Piccolo genotype modulates neural correlates of emotion processing but not executive functioning. Transl Psychiatry 2:e99
Woudstra S, van Tol MJ, Bochdanovits Z, van der Wee NJ, Zitman FG, van Buchem MA, Opmeer EM, Aleman A, Penninx BW, Veltman DJ et al (2013) Modulatory effects of the piccolo genotype on emotional memory in health and depression. Wiley, New York
Yu WP, Brenner S, Venkatesh B (2003) Duplication, degeneration and subfunctionalization of the nested synapsin-Timp genes in Fugu. Trends Genet 19:180–183
Zhai RG, Vardinon-Friedman H, Cases-Langhoff C, Becker B, Gundelfinger ED, Ziv NE, Garner CC (2001) Assembling the presynaptic active zone: a characterization of an active one precursor vesicle. Neuron 29:131–143
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by start-up funds to S. Fenster from Fort Lewis College, an undergraduate research grant from Fort Lewis College to D. Fountain and an undergraduate research grant from Ashland University to L. Knapp. The authors thank Catherine P. Fenster for helpful comments and suggestions on the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Human and animal rights statement
The respective Animal Use Care Committees at Ashland University and Fort Lewis College approved all animal procedures.
Additional information
David I. Fountain and Lindsey Knapp have contributed equally to this work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fountain, D.I., Knapp, L., Baugh, K. et al. Piccolo paralogs and orthologs display conserved patterns of alternative splicing within the C2A and C2B domains. Genes Genom 38, 407–419 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-015-0383-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-015-0383-1