Fig. 3. N-cadherin is dispensible for maintaining dendritic architecture in adult hippocampal area CA1.

A-C) Dendritic architecture is unchanged in cKO mice. Representative example (A) of a CA1 pyramidal cell taken from an adult cKO mouse and intracellularly filled with Lucifer Yellow. Bar = 50μm. Sholl analysis of CA1 pyramidal cell apical dendrites (B) showed no differences in branching between cKO mice and floxed control mice (n=3 mice per genotype; two-way repeated-measures ANOVA with genotype as a between-groups factor and radial distance from soma as a within-group factor). There were no differences between genotypes in total arbor length of CA1 pyramidal cell apical dendrites (C, p=0.27, unpaired Student’s t-test). Dendrite analyses in B,C were based on 8 CA1 neurons from 3 adult male WT mice and 13 CA1 neurons from 4 male adult cKO mice.

D-F) Representative images of 1 μm-thick, plastic-embedded sections through CA1 pyramidal cell layer taken from a floxed control mouse (D) or a cKO mouse (E). Stereological analysis (F) revealed no significant differences in cell density between genotypes (n=3 mice per genotype, p=0.84, unpaired Student’s t-test). All values were normalized to those of the floxed control mice.

G-H) Representative electron-micrographs through CA1 stratum radiatum taken from a floxed control mouse (G) or a cKO mouse (H). Bar=500 nm.

I) Stereological analysis revealed no significant differences in the number of synapses-per-neuron between cKO and floxed control mice (n=3 mice per genotype, p=0.94, unpaired Student’s t-test). All values were normalized to those of the floxed control mice.