Functional Analysis of Actin-Binding Proteins in the Central Nervous System of Drosophila

Using Drosophila actin-binding protein Dunc-115 as model system, this chapter describes a MARCM (mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker)-based method for analyzing cytoskeletal components for their functions in the nervous system. Following a concise description about the principle, a step-by-step protocol is provided for generating the needed stocks and for histological analysis. Additional details and explanations have been given in the accompanying notes. Together, this should form a practical and sufficient recipe for performing at the single-cell-level loss-of-function and gain-of-function analyses of proteins associated with the cytoskeleton.