Figure 5.

Podoplanin overexpression promotes synaptic activity and neuritic outgrowth. Hippocampal “sister” neurons from wild-type mice and cultured in identical conditions were transfected with a DNA plasmidic vector encoding for either the expression of the GFP alone (a) or with DNA encoding for a podoplanin-GFP fusion protein (b). Recordings of mEPSCs revealed a significant increase in the frequency of spontaneous synaptic events in neurons expressing podoplanin relative to those expressing GFP alone (representative current traces, upper panels a-b and bar graph, left in (c). Overexpressing of podoplanin also resulted in larger number of soma-derived neurites, which appeared shorter in length (pictures illustrating representative neurons, a-b lower panels, and bar graphs, middle and right in (c). Data are displayed as mean ± SEM. ***(p ≤ 0.001).