Enhanced clearance of protein aggregates in yeast and worm <i>rer1</i> mutants.

<p><b>A.</b> Live cell imaging of α-syn-GFP after a 4 hr induction in 0.2% galactose. TM (0.02 μg/ml) was added to the cultures after an initial induction in galactose and cells were imaged 2 hours later. In a marked contrast to untreated cells, the GFP foci were largely vacuolar in <i>rer1Δ</i> or wild type cells treated with TM (arrows). <b>B.</b> GFP immunoblot in whole cell lysates prepared from cells in (<b>A)</b>. The intravacuolar proteolysis of α-syn-GFP generates the transiently stable GFP moiety detected as a discrete fragment in SDS-PAGE. <b>C.</b> Fluorescent images of transgenic hermaphrodites stably expressing α-syn-GFP from a body wall muscle promoter (<i>Punc-</i>_<i>54</i>::<i>α-syn</i>::<i>GFP</i>). Arrows denote a subset of the α-syn-GFP foci. Worms co-expressing heat shock protein torsinA (<i>tor-2</i>) in the same cells (<i>P</i>_{<i>unc-54</i>}::<i>tor-2</i>) served as a positive experimental control. The average number of α-syn-GFP foci per worm scored from digitized Z-stacked images ± s.e.m are plotted in <b>D</b> (n >20).