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. 2022 Mar 8;14:854956. doi: 10.3389/fnsyn.2022.854956

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Rapid dynamics of the postsynaptic density (PSD) in dendritic spines. Knock-in mice in which the postsynaptic density protein PSD95 was fused to a fluorescent reporter were used to track the morphology of the PSD. Individual dendritic spines in the visual cortex were imaged using live stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy for up to 6 h. (A) At a time interval of 1 min, no morphological changes to PSD assemblies are observed. (B,C) At higher intervals of 30 min to 2 h, morphological changes can be seen at some synapses (B2,C2), while others appear to remain stable (B1,C1). (D) At synapses imaged up to 6 h, PSD assemblies may undergo morphological changes and then return to their original structure (D1), remain unchanged for several hours and only then undergo a morphological change (D2), or undergo multiple morphological changes over the course of several hours (D3,D4). Scale bars = 500 nm. (E) Quantification of the % of either no change, subtle and strong changes to the morphology of postsynaptic assemblies of PSD95 for increasing imaging time intervals. N = 4 mice; n = 18 (1–2 min), 13 (3 min), 43 (0.5–1 h), 35 (1.2–2 h), 10 (5–6 h) PSD95 assemblies imaged. Adapted with permission from Wegner et al. (2018; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).