• J H Tao-Cheng, A Dosemeci, P E Gallant, C Smith, and T Reese.
• Electron Microscopy (EM) Facility, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA. chengs@ninds.nih.gov
• Neuroscience. 2010 Jun 16; 168 (1): 11-7.

AbstractDendritic spines contain a family of abundant scaffolding proteins known as Shanks, but little is known about how their distributions might change during synaptic activity. Here, pre-embedding immunogold electron microscopy is used to localize Shanks in synapses from cultured hippocampal neurons. We find that Shanks are preferentially located at postsynaptic densities (PSDs) as well as in a filamentous network near the PSD, extending up to 120 nm from the postsynaptic membrane. Application of sub-type specific antibodies shows that Shank2 is typically concentrated at and near PSDs while Shank1 is, in addition, distributed throughout the spine head. Depolarization with high K+ for 2 min causes transient, reversible translocation of Shanks towards the PSD that is dependent on extracellular Ca2+. The amount of activity-induced redistribution and subsequent recovery is pronounced for Shank1 but less so for Shank2. Thus, Shank1 appears to be a dynamic element within the spine, whose translocation could be involved in activity-induced, transient structural changes, while Shank2 appears to be a more stable element positioned at the interface of the PSD with the spine cytoplasm.Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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