Axon regeneration following neuronal injury is an important repair mechanism that is not well understood at present. In Caenorhabditis elegans, axon regeneration is regulated by DDR-2, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) that contains a discoidin domain and modulates the Met-like SVH-2 RTK-JNK MAP kinase signaling pathway. Here, we describe the svh-10/sqv-3 and svh-11 genes, which encode components of a conserved glycosylation pathway, and show that they modulate axon regeneration in C. elegans Overexpression of svh-2, but not of ddr-2, can suppress the axon regeneration defect observed in svh-11 mutants, suggesting that SVH-11 functions between DDR-2 and SVH-2 in this glycosylation pathway. Furthermore, we found that DDR-2 is N-glycosylated at the Asn-141 residue located in its discoidin domain, and mutation of this residue caused an axon regeneration defect. These findings indicate that N-linked glycosylation plays an important role in axon regeneration in C. elegans.
Keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans; DDR-2; N-glycosylation; axon regeneration.
Copyright © 2019 Shimizu et al.