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BackgroundDeveloping retinas display retinal waves, the patterned spontaneous activity essential for circuit refinement. During the first postnatal week in rodents, retinal waves are mediated by synaptic transmission between starburst amacrine cells (SACs) and retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). The neuromodulator adenosine is essential for the generation of retinal waves. However, the cellular basis underlying adenosine's regulation of retinal waves remains elusive. Here, we investigated whether and how the adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR) regulates retinal waves and whether A2AR regulation of retinal waves acts via presynaptic SACs.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe showed that A2AR was expressed in the inner plexiform layer and ganglion cell layer of the developing rat retina. Knockdown of A2AR decreased the frequency of spontaneous Ca2+ transients, suggesting that endogenous A2AR may up-regulate wave frequency. To investigate whether A2AR acts via presynaptic SACs, we targeted gene expression to SACs by the metabotropic glutamate receptor type II promoter. Ca2+ transient frequency was increased by expressing wild-type A2AR (A2AR-WT) in SACs, suggesting that A2AR may up-regulate retinal waves via presynaptic SACs. Subsequent patch-clamp recordings on RGCs revealed that presynaptic A2AR-WT increased the frequency of wave-associated postsynaptic currents (PSCs) or depolarizations compared to the control, without changing the RGC's excitability, membrane potentials, or PSC charge. These findings suggest that presynaptic A2AR may not affect the membrane properties of postsynaptic RGCs. In contrast, by expressing the C-terminal truncated A2AR mutant (A2AR-ΔC) in SACs, the wave frequency was reduced compared to the A2AR-WT, but was similar to the control, suggesting that the full-length A2AR in SACs is required for A2AR up-regulation of retinal waves.Conclusions/SignificanceA2AR up-regulates the frequency of retinal waves via presynaptic SACs, requiring its full-length protein structure. Thus, by coupling with the downstream intracellular signaling, A2AR may have a great capacity to modulate patterned spontaneous activity during neural circuit refinement.

Drosophila flight muscle is a powerful model to study diverse processes such as transcriptional regulation, alternative splicing, metabolism, and mechanobiology, which all influence muscle development and myofibrillogenesis. Omics data, such as those generated by mass spectrometry or deep sequencing, can provide important mechanistic insights into these biological processes. For such approaches, it is beneficial to analyze tissue-specific samples to increase both selectivity and specificity of the omics fingerprints. Here we present a protocol for dissection of fluorescent-labeled flight muscle from live pupae to generate highly enriched muscle samples for omics applications. We first describe how to dissect flight muscles at early pupal stages (<48 h after puparium formation [APF]), when the muscles are discernable by green fluorescent protein (GFP) labeling. We then describe how to dissect muscles from late pupae (>48 h APF) or adults, when muscles are distinguishable under a dissecting microscope. The accompanying video protocol will make these technically demanding dissections more widely accessible to the muscle and Drosophila research communities. For RNA applications, we assay the quantity and quality of RNA that can be isolated at different time points and with different approaches. We further show that Bruno1 (Bru1) is necessary for a temporal shift in myosin heavy chain (Mhc) splicing, demonstrating that dissected muscles can be used for mRNA-Seq, mass spectrometry, and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) applications. This dissection protocol will help promote tissue-specific omics analyses and can be generally applied to study multiple biological aspects of myogenesis. Video Link The video component of this article can be found at https://www.jove.com/video/60309/ Drosophila melanogaster is another well-established genetic model organism. The structure of the sarcomere as well as individual sarcomere components are highly conserved from flies to vertebrates 4,9,10 , and the indirect flight muscles (IFMs) have become a powerful model to study multiple aspects of muscle development 11,12. First, the fibrillar flight muscles are functionally and morphologically distinct from tubular body muscles 11,13 , allowing investigation of muscle-type specific developmental mechanisms. Transcription factors including Spalt major (Salm) 14 , Extradenticle (Exd), and Homothorax (Hth) 15 have been identified as fibrillar fate regulators. Additionally, downstream of Salm, the CELF1 homolog Bruno1 (Bru1, Aret) directs a fibrillar-specific splicing program 16,17. Second, IFMs are an important model for understanding the process of myogenesis itself, from myoblast fusion and myotube attachment to myofibrillogenesis and sarcomere maturation 9,18,19. Third, Drosophila genetics permits investigation of contributions by individual proteins, protein domains, and protein isoforms to sarcomere formation, function, and biophysical properties 20,21,22,23. Lastly, IFM models have been developed for the study of...

The proper regulation of RNA processing is critical for muscle development and the fine-tuning of contractile ability among muscle fiber-types. RNA binding proteins (RBPs) regulate the diverse steps in RNA processing, including alternative splicing, which generates fiber-type specific isoforms of structural proteins that confer contractile sarcomeres with distinct biomechanical properties. Alternative splicing is disrupted in muscle diseases such as myotonic dystrophy and dilated cardiomyopathy and is altered after intense exercise as well as with aging. It is therefore important to understand splicing and RBP function, but currently, only a small fraction of the hundreds of annotated RBPs expressed in muscle have been characterized. Here, we demonstrate the utility of Drosophila as a genetic model system to investigate basic developmental mechanisms of RBP function in myogenesis. We find that RBPs exhibit dynamic temporal and fiber-type specific expression patterns in mRNA-Seq data and display muscle-specific phenotypes. We performed knockdown with 105 RNAi hairpins targeting 35 RBPs and report associated lethality, flight, myofiber and sarcomere defects, including flight muscle phenotypes for Doa, Rm62, mub, mbl, sbr, and clu. Knockdown phenotypes of spliceosome components, as highlighted by phenotypes for A-complex components SF1 and Hrb87F (hnRNPA1), revealed level- and temporal-dependent myofibril defects. We further show that splicing mediated by SF1 and Hrb87F is necessary for Z-disc stability and proper myofibril development, and strong knockdown of either gene results in impaired localization of kettin to the Z-disc. Our results expand the number of RBPs with a described phenotype in muscle and underscore the diversity in myofibril and transcriptomic phenotypes associated with splicing defects. Drosophila is thus a powerful model to gain disease-relevant insight into cellular and molecular phenotypes observed when expression levels of splicing factors, spliceosome components and splicing dynamics are altered.