Abstract
Actin is the most abundant protein in many cells, and regulating actin seems to be an important way to modulate cell activity. Actin had drawn a lot of attention on its involvement in motility, morphogenesis and proliferation of non-neuron cells, but little in neurons. Since neuronal cells contain as much of actin as non-neuron cells, some researchers suggested that actin may also play an important role in neurons. So more and more researches invested in this field, continually. In order to investigate the effects in which regulating actin may result in neurons, we examined some mutants about actin-interacted proteins of Drosophila larvae in this study. These mutants are Abl1/Abl4, abiKO/abiP2, Abl1 abiKO/Abl4 abiP2, and Fak56KG00304. To find the original function of these mutated protein in neurons, we observed the differences between wild-type and mutants in Drosophila Neuromuscular junction (NMJ) system. We compared many properties of Drosophila larvae which are separated into two groups, Abl and FAK, based on the relationship between these mutants. These properties are Synaptic transmission, Synaptic vesicles translocation and recycling, and Synaptic plasticity. We found that synaptic transmissions are affected both in Abl and FAK group. Besides, abi-/-and Fak56 have some effects on synaptic vesicles translocation. Furthermore, only abi-/- has effects on synaptic plasticity. Overall results implicate that Abl group may get involved in maintaining synaptic strength and controlling the extent of synaptic branch, and FAK may also get involve in control of axonal growth. In addition, Abi may have a little bit interaction with cAMP cascade which may be related with leaning and memory.