Laminin is uniformly expressed in basement membranes surrounding longitudinal axon tracts in the ventral and dorsal nerve cords in C. elegans.

Abstract

Laminin is a core basement membrane (BM) component. Mutations in laminin subunits cause a variety of defects including axon navigation defects. We examined the localization of the laminin subunits LAM-3 (laminin αA), EPI-1 (laminin αB) and LAM-2 (laminin γ) in basement membranes surrounding the ventral nerve cord (VNC) and the dorsal nerve cord (DNC) in C. elegans . We found that EPI-1 and LAM-2 are uniformly distributed, which suggests that laminins might provide an adhesive substrate for axons but not a directional cue for the positioning of VNC and DNC axon tracts.