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Summary 52The plant hormone ethylene and its associated signaling pathway are involved in 53 cortical microtubule reassembly, a process that is critical for the salt-stress response in implicating ethylene signaling in salt-stress tolerance in plants.

In developing and mature nervous systems, diverse neuronal subtypes innervate common targets to establish, maintain, and modify neural circuit function. A major challenge towards understanding the structural and functional architecture of neural circuits is to separate these inputs and determine their intrinsic and heterosynaptic relationships. The Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction is a powerful model system to study these questions, where two glutamatergic motor neurons, the strong phasic-like <strong>Is</strong> and weak tonic-like <strong>Ib</strong>, co-innervate individual muscle targets to coordinate locomotor behavior. However, complete neurotransmission from each input has never been electrophysiologically separated. We have employed a botulinum neurotoxin, BoNT-C, that eliminates both spontaneous and evoked neurotransmission without perturbing synaptic growth or structure, enabling the first approach that accurately isolates input-specific neurotransmission. Selective expression of BoNT-C in Is or Ib motor neurons disambiguates the functional properties of each input. Importantly, the blended values of Is+Ib neurotransmission can be fully recapitulated by isolated physiology from each input. Finally, selective silencing by BoNT-C does not induce heterosynaptic structural or functional plasticity at the convergent input. Thus, BoNT-C establishes the first approach to accurately separate neurotransmission between tonic vs phasic neurons and defines heterosynaptic plasticity rules in a powerful model glutamatergic circuit.

Neurons exhibit a striking degree of functional diversity, each one tuned to the needs of the circuitry in which it is embedded. A fundamental functional dichotomy occurs in activity patterns, with some neurons firing at a relatively constant “tonic” rate, while others fire in bursts - a “phasic” pattern. Synapses formed by tonic vs phasic neurons are also functionally differentiated, yet the bases of their distinctive properties remain enigmatic. A major challenge towards illuminating the synaptic differences between tonic and phasic neurons is the difficulty in isolating their physiological properties. At theDrosophilaneuromuscular junction (NMJ), most muscle fibers are co-innervated by two motor neurons, the tonic “MN-Ib” and phasic “MN-Is”. Here, we employed selective expression of a newly developed botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT-C) transgene to silence tonic or phasic motor neurons. This approach revealed major differences in their neurotransmitter release properties, including probability, short-term plasticity, and vesicle pools. Furthermore, Ca2+imaging demonstrated ~two-fold greater Ca2+influx at phasic neuron release sites relative to tonic, along with enhanced synaptic vesicle coupling. Finally, confocal and super resolution imaging revealed that phasic neuron release sites are organized in a more compact arrangement, with enhanced stoichiometry of voltage-gated Ca2+channels relative to other active zone scaffolds. These data suggest that distinctions in active zone nano-architecture and Ca2+influx collaborate to differentially tune glutamate release at synapses of tonic vs phasic neuronal subtypes.

Regulation of stomatal movement is critical for plant adaptation to environmental stresses. The microtubule cytoskeleton undergoes disassembly, which is critical for stomatal closure in response to abscisic acid (ABA). However, the mechanism underlying this regulation largely remains unclear. Here we show that a ubiquitin-26S proteasome (UPS)-dependent pathway mediates microtubule disassembly and is required for ABA-induced stomatal closure. Moreover, we identify and characterize the ubiquitin E3 ligase MREL57 (MICROTUBULE-RELATED E3 LIGASE57) and the microtubule-stabilizing protein WDL7 (WAVE-DAMPENED2-LIKE7) in Arabidopsis and show that the MREL57-WDL7 module regulates microtubule disassembly to mediate stomatal closure in response to drought stress and ABA treatment. MREL57 interacts with, ubiquitinates and degrades WDL7, and this effect is clearly enhanced by ABA. ABA-induced stomatal closure and microtubule disassembly are significantly suppressed in mrel57 mutants, and these phenotypes can be restored when WDL7 expression is decreased. Our results unravel UPS-dependent mechanisms and the role of an MREL57-WDL7 module in microtubule disassembly and stomatal closure in response to drought stress and ABA.

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