Figure 3. Fluorescence of animals expressing
rsbp-1 and
dop-1 promoter transgenes. (A), young adult transgenic animal showing expression of
rsbp-1p::GFP in neurons of the head and retrovesicular ganglia (left bracket), pre-anal ganglia and tail neurons (right bracket), and vulval muscle cells (large arrows). Expression is also seen in the cell bodies and processes of ventral cord motor neurons. (small arrows indicate positions of the ventral cord neuron cell bodies). Faint green fluorescence can also be seen in body-wall and pharyngeal muscle cells. (B-D), high-power magnification images of the ventral cord area of a double transgenic animal expressing
rsbp-1p::mCherry and
dop-1p::GFP transgenes. In all images dorsal is up and anterior is left. (B), Nomarski image of double transgenic animal shown in panels C-E. (C), red fluorescence of the mCherry protein expressed from the extrachromosomal transgene
rsbp-1p::mCherry. (D), green fluorescence of GFP protein expressed from the chromosomally integrated transgene
dop-1p::GFP. (E), merged image showing coexpression of
rspb-1 and
dop-1 transgenes in cholinergic motor neurons. Asterisks indicate the positions of cell bodies of GABAergic motor neurons that express
rsbp-1p::mCherry but not
dop-1p::GFP. RSBP is expressed in both cholinergic and GABAergic motor neurons of the ventral cord and is thus coexpressed with both DOP-1 and DOP-3 receptors. Some cells of the ventral cord shown in panel E express the
dop-1p::GFP but not the
rsbp-1p::mCherry transgene. The relative position of these nonmCherry- expressing cells varies among transgenic animals suggesting that the lack of expression of the
rsbp-1p::mCherry transgene in some cells that express the
dop-1p::GFP transgene is due to random loss of the extrachromosomal transgene during cell division and not due to restricted expression of
rsbp-1.