Fig. 4. DAergic axon terminals undergo dystrophic changes in both dorsal and ventral striatum of Aux-KO/SJ1-KI^RQ mice.

a, b Representative images for TH and DAT in cryopreserved-sections for 4 genotypes in a dorsal striatum and b nucleus accumbens (NAc) which is part of the ventral striatum. Scale bar: 20 µm. c Quantification of colocalization of TH and DAT clusters using Mander’s coefficient for dorsal striatum, DS and ventral striatum, VS. Data are represented as mean ± SEM. n = 3–4 mice per genotype. d, e Quantification for the average number of DAT and TH clusters above 5 µm² in d dorsal striatum and (e) ventral striatum of 1–2 months old mice. The number of clusters is calculated in five regions of interest (ROIs) which were selected at random for quantification of each mouse. Data are represented as mean ± SEM (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001 by two-way ANOVA with post-hoc Tukey’s test). n = 3–4 mice for each genotype.