ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
A mechanism for graded motor control encoded in the channel properties of the muscle ACh receptor.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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22 citing papers in PubMed, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Regulation of motor neuron differentiation in thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
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- Neuron-specific Agrin splicing by Nova RNA-binding proteins regulates conserved neuromuscular junction development in chordates.PLoS biology · 2025Article
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- A conserved RNA switch for acetylcholine receptor clustering at neuromuscular junctions in chordates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Development and circuitry of the tunicate larval Motor Ganglion, a putative hindbrain/spinal cord homolog.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2024Review
- Transitions of motor neuron activities duringFrontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Article
- Comprehensive analysis of locomotion dynamics in the protochordate Ciona intestinalis reveals how neuromodulators flexibly shape its behavioral repertoire.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- A single motor neuron determines the rhythm of early motor behavior inScience advances · 2021Article
- Neuromesodermal Lineage Contribution to CNS Development in Invertebrate and Vertebrate Chordates.Genes · 2021Review
- Bilaterally Asymmetric Helical Myofibrils in Ascidian Tadpole Larvae.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Article
- The Hair Cell α9α10 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor: Odd Cousin in an Old Family.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2021Review
- Cellular identity and CaScientific reports · 2020Article
- Candidate variants in TUB are associated with familial tremor.PLoS genetics · 2020Article
- Review
- Developmental system drift in motor ganglion patterning between distantly related tunicates.EvoDevo · 2018Article
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- An acetylcholine receptor lacking both γ and ε subunits mediates transmission in zebrafish slow muscle synapses.The Journal of general physiology · 2011Article
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3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The larva of the invertebrate chordate Ciona intestinalis possesses only 36 striated muscle cells and lacks body segmentation. It can swim, however, like a vertebrate tadpole, and how its simple body achieves such sophisticated motor control remains puzzling. We found that muscle contractions in Ciona larvae are variable and can be changed by sensory stimuli, so that neuromuscular transmission can convert the variable neural inputs into graded muscle activity. We characterized the molecular nature of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) at neuromuscular synapses. When heterologously expressed in Xenopus oocytes, this nAChR channel exhibited two biophysical features resembling vertebrate neuronal nAChRs rather than the muscle type: inward rectification and high Ca(2+) permeability. Both of these properties were abolished by a simple mutation at the channel pore in one of the non-α subunits, called BGDE3, so as to adopt the sequence of related subunits in vertebrates, γ and ε. In vivo exchange of native BGDE3 with this mutant severely disrupted graded motor control, producing instead sporadic all-or-none-like flexions. The graded nature of excitation-contraction (E-C) coupling in this organism is based on the traits of the nAChR channel pore, which confer fine controllability on such a coarse motor architecture.
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