Picture from Driesschaert, Brecht et al. (2022) MicroPubl Biol

Figure 1.(A) Schematic representation of the research objective. The Q system is applied to establish mNeonGreen (mNG) expression and secretion (through the SEL-1 N-terminal signal peptide, SEL-1SP) from C. elegans neurons, which will end up being endocytosed and degraded by the coelomocytes. In presence of quinic acid (QA), the transcriptional suppressor (QS) is sequestered, leaving the transcriptional activator (QF) bound to the enhancer sequence (QUAS), enabling expression of mNeonGreen. Absence of QA permits interaction of QS with QF, blocking transcription (not included in diagram). (B) Coelomocyte-specific reporter signal of animals with varying QF/QS ratios, vs wild type (WT). The QF/QS ratios indicated on the X-axis refer to the ratios of the corresponding constructs in the injection mix. Quinic acid absence: white box; presence: grey box. Tukey style box plots: box from Q1 to Q3, line at median value, whisker boundaries at 1.5 interquartile range; dots are individual data points beyond that range. Statistical significance as per type III ANOVA with Bonferroni corrected p-value indications ** padj ≤ 0.005, * padj ≤ 0.05 and 'NS' padj > 0.05. (C) Percentage of worms showing a green fluorescent signal in the target tissue/cells (body wall muscle, ventral nerve cord or coelomocytes) for animals with the Q system expressed in body wall muscle (BWM) or ventral nerve cord (VNC), and a QUAS-only coelomocyte-targeted reporter strain (QUAS), respectively. For wild-type animals (WT), all three tissue types were considered. Quinic acid absence: white bar; presence: grey bar. Numbers between parentheses are number of scored worms. Statistical significance as per exact binomial tests with p-value indications ** padj ≤ 0.005, * padj ≤ 0.05 and 'NS' padj > 0.05.