Fig. 1.

Schematic of the neuromuscular junction and overview of corresponding readouts from the developed assay of nAChR activation. The schematics of the neuromuscular junction (top panels) demonstrate the release of ACh from the pre-synaptic neuron and binding of ACh to the post-synaptic membrane in the absence of α-NTxs (left, Agonist), in the presence of α-NTxs (middle, Antagonist), and in the presence of both α-NTxs and α-NTx-inhibitors (right, α-NTx-inhibitor). Underneath each schematic is the typical fluorescent response using the assay of a well in a 96-well plate containing TE671 cells when ACh is applied with different pre-incubation conditions after a 20 s baseline recording. The three conditions represent the responses when assay buffer alone (Agonist), α-NTx (Antagonist) and α-NTx plus α-NTx-inhibitors (α-NTx-inhibitors: antibodies, decoy receptors, and small molecules) are added. All schematics were created with BioRender.com.