Identification and Investigation of Drosophila Postsynaptic Density Homologs

AMPA receptors are responsible for fast excitatory transmission in the CNS and the trafficking of these receptors has been implicated in LTP and learning and memory. These receptors reside in the postsynaptic density, a network of proteins that links the receptors to downstream signaling components and to the neuronal cytoskeleton. To determine whether the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, possesses a similar array of proteins as are found at the mammalian PSD, we identified Drosophila homologs of 95.8% of mammalian PSD proteins. We investigated, for the first time, the role of one of these PSD proteins, Pod1 in GluR cluster formation at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction and found that mutations in pod1 resulted in a specific loss of A-type receptors at the synapse.