Drosophila Vision Depends on Carcinine Uptake by an Organic Cation Transporter
Chaturvedi, Ratna ; Luan, Zhuo ; Guo, Peiyi ; Li, Hong-Sheng
Citations
Student Authors
Faculty Advisor
Academic Program
UMass Chan Affiliations
Document Type
Publication Date
Subject Area
Files
Embargo Expiration Date
Link to Full Text
Abstract
Recycling of neurotransmitters is essential for sustained neuronal signaling, yet recycling pathways for various transmitters, including histamine, remain poorly understood. In the first visual ganglion (lamina) of Drosophila, photoreceptor-released histamine is taken up into perisynaptic glia, converted to carcinine, and delivered back to the photoreceptor for histamine regeneration. Here, we identify an organic cation transporter, CarT (carcinine transporter), that transports carcinine into photoreceptors during histamine recycling. CarT mediated in vitro uptake of carcinine. Deletion of the CarT gene caused an accumulation of carcinine in laminar glia accompanied by a reduction in histamine, resulting in abolished photoreceptor signal transmission and blindness in behavioral assays. These defects were rescued by expression of CarT cDNA in photoreceptors, and they were reproduced by photoreceptor-specific CarT knockdown. Our findings suggest a common role for the conserved family of CarT-like transporters in maintaining histamine homeostasis in both mammalian and fly brains.
Source
Cell Rep. 2016 Mar 8;14(9):2076-83. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2016.02.009. Epub 2016 Feb 25. Link to article on publisher's site
Year of Medical School at Time of Visit
Sponsors
Dates of Travel
DOI
Permanent Link to this Item
PubMed ID
Other Identifiers
Notes
Co-author Peiyi Guo is a doctoral student in the Neuroscience Program in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) at UMass Medical School.