Figure 4. Comparison of dendritic spine density and morphology between SLC7A11^+/+ and SLC7A11^sut/sut mice.

Golgi-Cox stained dendritic spines located on secondary apical dendrites of primary motor cortex layer V pyramidal cells from male (a-b) or female (c-d) naïve SLC7A11^+/+ (+/+; n = 9 neurons from 4 males or n = 9 neurons from 3 females) and SLC7A11^sut/sut (sut/sut; n = 8 neurons from 3 males or n = 9 neurons from 3 females) littermates were analyzed using the Risher et al. method as described in Materials and Methods.

a, c) The horizontal lines represent the mean number of spines/10 μm dendritic length ± SD derived from individual neurons from (a) male or (c) female SLC7A11^+/+ [black circles] and SLC7A11^sut/sut [blue circles] mice. Inset: representative photomicrographs (60x) of secondary apical dendritic spines from Golgi-Cox stained tissue. Both male and female SLC7A11^sut/sut mice have similar dendritic spine densities on layer V pyramidal cells as compared to sex-matched SLC7A11^+/+ controls (unpaired t test on log-transformed data).

b, d) The horizontal lines represent the mean percentage of spines ± SD derived from individual neurons of (b) male or (d) female SLC7A11^+/+ (black circles, n = 5056 spines from 4 males or n = 4763 spines from 3 females) or SLC7A11^sut/sut (blue circles, n = 5355 spines from 3 males or n = 4430 spines from 3 females) mice categorized as either mushroom, filopodia, stubby, branched, thin, or long thin. An asterisk (*) represents a significant between-genotype difference (p = 0.0353, unpaired t test on arcsine transformed data, n = 8-9 neurons/genotype).