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. 2021 Apr 1;10:e67895. doi: 10.7554/eLife.67895

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© 2021, Althaus and Sutton

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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Figure 1. — Left: the synapse modulating effects of all-trans retinoic acid (atRA) first reported in rodent neurons are preserved in human cortical neurons in intact cortical circuits. Right: all-trans retinoic acid increases the strength (measured as the number of AMPA-type glutamate receptors; AMPARs, green) and size of excitatory synapses in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in human cortical slices. All-trans retinoic acid also increases the size of the spine apparatus, a synaptic organelle found in dendritic spines and previously linked to synapse remodeling (orange). To test whether the spine apparatus is important for the effects of all-trans retinoic acid on synapses, Lenz et al. compared wild-type (Synpo +, top), and synaptopodin-deficient (Synpo -, bottom) mice, which lack the spine apparatus. Synapses lacking the spine apparatus were smaller and failed to increase in strength after applying all-trans retinoic acid. However, applying the molecule still enlarged the spines without a spine apparatus, demonstrating that this organelle has a specific role in regulating changes in synaptic strength induced by all-trans retinoic acid.