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Phagocytosis and self-destruction break down dendrites of Drosophila sensory neurons at distinct steps of Wallerian degeneration.

Hui JiMaria L SaparAnkita SarkarBei WangChun Han
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2022)
After injury, severed dendrites and axons expose the "eat-me" signal phosphatidylserine (PS) on their surface while they break down. The degeneration of injured axons is controlled by a conserved Wallerian degeneration (WD) pathway, which is thought to activate neurite self-destruction through Sarm-mediated nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD + ) depletion. While neurite PS exposure is known to be affected by genetic manipulations of NAD + , how the WD pathway coordinates both neurite PS exposure and self-destruction and whether PS-induced phagocytosis contributes to neurite breakdown in vivo remain unknown. Here, we show that in Drosophila sensory dendrites, PS exposure and self-destruction are two sequential steps of WD resulting from Sarm activation. Surprisingly, phagocytosis is the main driver of dendrite degeneration induced by both genetic NAD + disruptions and injury. However, unlike neuronal Nmnat loss, which triggers PS exposure only and results in phagocytosis-dependent dendrite degeneration, injury activates both PS exposure and self-destruction as two redundant means of dendrite degeneration. Furthermore, the axon-death factor Axed is only partially required for self-destruction of injured dendrites, acting in parallel with PS-induced phagocytosis. Lastly, injured dendrites exhibit a unique rhythmic calcium-flashing that correlates with WD. Therefore, both NAD + -related general mechanisms and dendrite-specific programs govern PS exposure and self-destruction in injury-induced dendrite degeneration in vivo.
Keyphrases
  • diabetic rats
  • high glucose
  • drug induced
  • gene expression
  • public health
  • blood brain barrier
  • dna methylation
  • oxidative stress
  • subarachnoid hemorrhage
  • optic nerve
  • cerebral ischemia
  • optical coherence tomography