{"doi":"10.1242/dev.204678","title":"A PDZ-RapGEF promotes synaptic development in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i> through a Rap/Rac signaling pathway","abstract":"Small G proteins coordinate the development of nerve terminals. The activity of G proteins is finely tuned by GTPase regulatory proteins. Previously, we have observed that PXF-1, a Caenorhabditis elegans GTPase regulatory protein, is required for the function of cholinergic motor neurons. Here, we investigated how PXF-1 coordinates the development of presynaptic terminals at the molecular level. We observed that PXF-1 acts through RAP-1 to promote synapse development. Subsequently, we found that pxf-1 mutants display a reduction in RAC-2 activity, which is required for cholinergic synapse development. We observed that RAC-2 acts downstream of RAP-1. Finally, we identified a physical interaction between RAP-1 and TIAM-1, a Rac guanine exchange factor, which links PXF-1 function to the presynaptic actin cytoskeleton through RAC-2 activation. These findings highlight how small G protein signaling pathways interact to coordinate the development of presynaptic terminals.","journal":"Development","year":2025,"id":553729,"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":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":333389,"name":"Michael K. Scales","orcid":"0000-0002-3645-5643","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1169663,"name":"Julie Watkins","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1450661,"name":"Martin Werner","orcid":"0000-0002-6951-8022","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":527338,"name":"Salvatore J. Cherra","orcid":"0000-0003-1581-9150","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":966136,"name":"Reagan Lamb","orcid":"0000-0002-3390-401X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":65,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:54:45.872391Z","pmid":"40748210","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":[]}