Figure 2.
Heterologously expressed SynCAM induces presynaptic specializations in adjacent cholinergic neurons. HEK293 cells were transfected with constructs encoding (A) SynCAM-GFP (green), or (B) GFP (green) and grown for 2 days with E8 CG neurons that had been in culture for 4 days; cells were immunostained for SV2 (red) and imaged. (C) Quantifying the proportion of transfected HEK cells per culture contacted by multiple SV2 clusters showed that SynCAM-GFP significantly increased the amount of SV2 clusters abutting the transfected HEK cells (arrows in A) while GFP did not. Values represent the mean ± SEM of 3–4 separate experiments. *p < 0.05 compared to GFP using Student's t-test. Scale bars: 10 µm.