Given that mutations in human LMNA also produce neuropathies we tested for central nervous system effects using the pan-neural driver elav [46], [47].
Indeed, the ectopic expression of the reductase, under the control of the pan-neural driver, elav-GAL4, in flies carrying a mutation leading to neurodegenerescence, is sufficient to rescue the lethal phenotype.
In case of adult-onset expression, virgins carrying a temperature sensitive Gal80 in combination with the pan-neural driver P{w[+mW.hs] = GawB}elav[C155]; P{w[+mC] = tubP-GAL80[ts]}20 (elavc155::Gal4;Gal80[ts]) were crossed to w/Y UAS::TDP-43ICyO males, respectively.
UAS-Drep-2GFP was overexpressed using the pan-neural driver line elavc155-Gal4.
Next, we expressed either nls-lacZ or tdTomato-nls under the control of a strong, pan-neural driver to determine whether this would cause expression of the other reporter.
Notably, silencing NPF expression using c929-Gal4 or the pan-neural driver elav-Gal4 (which caused a 5.3-fold decrease in transcript level, Figure 4 figure supplement 4) was ineffective at changing the male inhibitory courtship response.
Re-expression of drep-2 cDNA by using either the pan-neural driver elavIII-Gal4 or two different KC-specific drivers (30y-Gal4 and mb247-Gal4) was sufficient to rescue STM scores.
Although it has been reported that elav-Gal4 is also expressed in neuroblasts and therefore behaves as a pan-neural driver in late stages of neurogenesis, in earlier stages, when CCAP neurons are generates, its expression is restricted to postmitotic cells (Berger et al., 2007), thus in these experiments can be consider a postmitotic driver.
The Actin-Gal4 constitutive driver, the Elav-Gal4 and Da-Gal4 pan-neural drivers [26], [27] and the BG380-Gal4 motoneuron driver [28] were used to assess lethality.
C316 induces UAS-gfp expression in the larval fat body, in the cardia and in DPM neurons (data not shown) [58], while elav-GAL4 is a pan-neural GAL4-driver [52].
Similar results were observed for all three transgenes U-Cdc42V122, U-RacV12 and U-ctMLCK) when the pan-neural elav-Gal4 driver line was utilized (data not shown).
