{"doi":"10.1101/2022.02.11.479800","title":"Conserved basal lamina proteins, laminin and nidogen, are repurposed to organize mechanosensory complexes responsible for touch sensation","abstract":"Summary The sense of touch is conferred by the conjoint function of somatosensory neurons and skin cells. These cells meet across a gap filled by a basal lamina, an ancient structure found in metazoans. Using Caenorhabditis elegans , we show that membrane-matrix complexes containing laminin, nidogen, and the MEC-4 mechano-electrical transduction channel reside at this interface and are instrumental for proper touch sensation. These complexes fail to coalesce in touch-insensitive extracellular matrix mutants and in dissociated neurons. MEC-4, but not laminin or nidogen, is destabilized by point mutations in the C-terminal Kunitz domain of the extracellular matrix component, MEC-1. Thus, neuron-epithelial cell interfaces are instrumental in mechanosensory complex assembly and function. Loss of nidogen reduces the density of mechanoreceptor complexes and the amplitude of the touch-evoked currents they carry. These findings imply that somatosensory neurons secrete proteins that actively repurpose the basal lamina to generate special-purpose mechanosensory complexes responsible for vibrotactile sensing.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":300939,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9565,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":829438,"name":"Joy A. Franco","orcid":"0000-0001-8254-6776","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616200,"name":"Ben Mulcahy","orcid":"0000-0002-3336-245X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":638152,"name":"Lingxin Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-5369-3678","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":991839,"name":"Dail Chapman","orcid":"0000-0002-9169-1489","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":991840,"name":"Chandni Jaisinghani","orcid":"0000-0002-5413-9281","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":329236,"name":"Beth L. Pruitt","orcid":"0000-0002-4861-2124","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":360551,"name":"Mei Zhen","orcid":"0000-0003-0086-9622","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277387,"name":"Miriam B. Goodman","orcid":"0000-0002-5810-1272","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":591962,"name":"Alakananda Das","orcid":"0000-0003-3672-3895","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":144,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:57.812980Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}