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Published online 21 October 2002. doi:10.1083/jcb.200203055
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© The Rockefeller University Press, 0021-9525/2002/10/337 $5.00
The Journal of Cell Biology, Volume 159, Number 2, 337-348

Article

 The L-type voltage-dependent Ca2+ channel EGL-19 controls body wall muscle function in Caenorhabditis elegans

Maëlle Jospin1, Vincent Jacquemond1, Marie-Christine Mariol2, Laurent Ségalat2 and Bruno Allard1

1 Physiologie des Eléments Excitables, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR 5123
2 UMR 5534, Université C. Bernard Lyon I, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France

Address correspondence to Bruno Allard, Physiologie des Eléments Excitables, UMR CNRS 5123, Université C. Bernard Lyon I, 43 boulevard du 11 Novembre 1918, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France. Tel.: 33-4-72-43-1032. Fax: 33-4-78-94-6820. E-mail: bruno.allard{at}univ-lyon1.fr

Caenorhabditis elegans is a powerful model system widely used to investigate the relationships between genes and complex behaviors like locomotion. However, physiological studies at the cellular level have been restricted by the difficulty to dissect this microscopic animal. Thus, little is known about the properties of body wall muscle cells used for locomotion. Using in situ patch clamp technique, we show that body wall muscle cells generate spontaneous spike potentials and develop graded action potentials in response to injection of positive current of increasing amplitude. In the presence of K+ channel blockers, membrane depolarization elicited Ca2+ currents inhibited by nifedipine and exhibiting Ca2+-dependent inactivation. Our results give evidence that the Ca2+ channel involved belongs to the L-type class and corresponds to EGL-19, a putative Ca2+ channel originally thought to be a member of this class on the basis of genomic data. Using Ca2+ fluorescence imaging on patch-clamped muscle cells, we demonstrate that the Ca2+ transients elicited by membrane depolarization are under the control of Ca2+ entry through L-type Ca2+ channels. In reduction of function egl-19 mutant muscle cells, Ca2+ currents displayed slower activation kinetics and provided a significantly smaller Ca2+ entry, whereas the threshold for Ca2+ transients was shifted toward positive membrane potentials.

Key Words: Ca2+ currents; C. elegans; muscle; egl-19; excitation-contraction coupling


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