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. 2005 Mar 30;25(13):3379–3388. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3553-04.2005

Figure 5.

Figure 5.

PAK3 regulates dendritic spine and synapse formation. Different PAK3 constructs were transfected into hippocampal neurons at 7 d in culture and were fixed and immunostained at 14 d in culture. GFP was cotransfected with the PAK3 constructs to visualize the spines. Control neurons were cotransfected with GFP and an empty vector. Ectopic expression of WT-PAK3 or CA-PAK3 promotes the formation of dendritic spines and protrusions (A) as well as the formation of excitatory synapses as visualized by PSD-95 immunostaining (B). Expression of either DN-PAK3 or KD-PAK3 inhibits the formation of dendritic spines and excitatory synapses (A, B). Scale bar, 10 μm. C, Quantification of dendritic spines and protrusions in neurons transfected with the PAK3 constructs. *p < 0.001; **, ***p < 0.0005. D, Quantification of PSD-95 clusters in neurons transfected with the PAK3 constructs. *p < 0.001; **p < 0.0001. For each construct, 85-100 dendrites of 17-20 neurons from three independent cultures were analyzed. Error bars represent SEM from three experiments.