Dendritic spine formation and synaptic function require neurobeachin

Katharina Niesmann, Dorothee Breuer, Johannes Brockhaus, Gesche Born, Ilka Wolff, Carsten Reissner, Manfred W. Kilimann, Astrid Rohlmann and Markus Missler ()
Additional contact information
Katharina Niesmann: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Dorothee Breuer: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Johannes Brockhaus: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Gesche Born: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Ilka Wolff: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Carsten Reissner: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Manfred W. Kilimann: Uppsala University
Astrid Rohlmann: Westfälische Wilhelms-University
Markus Missler: Westfälische Wilhelms-University

Nature Communications, 2011, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract A challenge in neuroscience is to understand the mechanisms underlying synapse formation. Most excitatory synapses in the brain are built on spines, which are actin-rich protrusions from dendrites. Spines are a major substrate of brain plasticity, and spine pathologies are observed in various mental illnesses. Here we investigate the role of neurobeachin (Nbea), a multidomain protein previously linked to cases of autism, in synaptogenesis. We show that deletion of Nbea leads to reduced numbers of spinous synapses in cultured neurons from complete knockouts and in cortical tissue from heterozygous mice, accompanied by altered miniature postsynaptic currents. In addition, excitatory synapses terminate mostly at dendritic shafts instead of spine heads in Nbea mutants, and actin becomes less enriched synaptically. As actin and synaptopodin, a spine-associated protein with actin-bundling activity, accumulate ectopically near the Golgi apparatus of mutant neurons, a role emerges for Nbea in trafficking important cargo to pre- and postsynaptic compartments.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1565 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:2:y:2011:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms1565

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1565

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().