Articles by Encarna Alejandre in JoVE

Osmotic Avoidance in Caenorhabditis elegans: Synaptic Function of Two Genes, Orthologues of Human NRXN1 and NLGN1, as Candidates for Autism

JoVE 1616 12/11/2009

Fernando Calahorro^1,2, Encarna Alejandre^1,2, Manuel Ruiz-Rubio^1,2

¹Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Córdoba, ²Instituto Maimónides de Investigación Biomédica de Córdoba (IMIBIC)

Neurexins and neuroligins are membrane-neuron adhesion proteins which perform essential roles in synaptic differentiation and transmission. Neuroligin deficient mutants of C. elegans are defective in detecting osmotic strength, but when they also contain a mutation in the gene coding neurexin, they recover the wild type phenotype.