Skip to main content
. 2014 Jul 9;9(7):e101770. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101770

Figure 7. The isoform-specific α-actinin-2 EF hand domain dictates normal spine morphology and PSD assembly.

Figure 7

A) α-Actinin-4 is ubiquitously enriched within hippocampal neurons and glia cells. Cells were lysed and immunoblotted for α-actinin-4. Actin is the loading control. B) α-Actinin-2-EF4 and α-actinin-4-EF2 run at 100KDa, equivalent to endogenous wild type α-actinin-2 and α-actinin-4, respectively. C) The calcium-insensitive EF hand domain in α-actinin-2 dictates normal spine morphology and PSD organization. Hippocampal neurons were co-transfected at DIV 17 with GFP and either pSUPER, pSUPER-α-actinin-2, pSUPER-α-actinin-2 plus α-actinin-2-SS, pSUPER-α-actinin-2 plus α-actinin-2-EF4, pSUPER-α-actinin-2 plus α-actinin-4, or pSUPER-α-actinin-2 plus α-actinin-4-EF2. Neurons were fixed on DIV 21 and scored for changes in head width (D) and fraction of spines with PSD-95 (E). For each condition, 305-1725 spines from 22-33 neurons of 3 separate cultures were analyzed. Error bars represent SEM. p-values were derived using the paired t-test.