Fig. 2

Mutant Tau^AT leads to substantial damage in GABAergic motor neurons. Punc-25::gfp reporter that labels GABAergic inhibitory neurons with GFP, was crossed with respective tau-transgenic worms to visualize these neurons. a Cartoon depicting the GABAergic inhibitory motor system in an adult worm. b-f depict representative maximum intensity projections (MIP) of day-1 old adults of the transgenes. For whole worm MIPs, see Additional file 11. Abnormalities seen as gaps in the GABAergic inhibitory neurons are highlighted by arrowheads. GABAergic neurons show normal connectivity in non-tg reporter worms, both dorsal and ventral nerve cords are intact (b). Expression of Tau^wt produces dose dependent abnormalities in GABAergic neurons, with Tau^wt -hi neurons (d) accumulating more damage than Tau^wt -lo (c). However, mutant Tau^AT expression leads to severe abnormalities in the form of gaps in the dorsal and ventral nerve cords, both Tau^AT-lo (e) and Tau^AT-hi (f). One of the striking features of mutant Tau^AT worms is the absence of stretches of dorsal cord (bracketed areas), not found in non-tg worms or Tau^wt worms. See Table 1 for detailed quantitative analysis