Doctoral thesis
English

Structure, development and plasticity of GABAergic synapses

ContributorsVirtanen, Mari
Defense date2016-04-28
Abstract

Studies of inhibitory synapses on pyramidal neurons have been complicated by the lack of easily visualisable postsynaptic anatomical proxies. Here we took advantage of the GABAergic post‐synaptic scaffolding protein gephyrin. Electroporating rat pups on the embryonic day E17.5 with a plasmid encoding for GephyrinTOMATO produces fluorescently tagged gephyrin in a subset of neurons, with no implication of the gephyrin overexpression perturbing normal development. By iontophoretically filling electroporated cells in fixed slices with a fluorescent dye, we can estimate the in vivo location of GABAergic synapses on the dendritic tree. Our results indicate that on the basal dendrites of rat medial prefrontal cortex layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons density of GABAergic synapses steeply increases during the first weeks of postnatal development. Furthermore, when the electroporated animals were anesthetized during 6 hours on postnatal day 7 or 9 with the benzodiazepine midazolam, transient changes in gephyrin cluster denstity and size could be observed.

NoteDiplôme commun des univ. de Genève et Lausanne. Thèse en Neurosciences des universités de Genève et de Lausanne
Citation (ISO format)
VIRTANEN, Mari. Structure, development and plasticity of GABAergic synapses. Doctoral Thesis, 2016. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:85311
Main files (1)
Thesis
accessLevelPrivate
Identifiers
585views
2downloads

Technical informations

Creation07/14/2016 11:48:00 AM
First validation07/14/2016 11:48:00 AM
Update time03/15/2023 12:33:22 AM
Status update03/15/2023 12:33:22 AM
Last indexation10/31/2024 3:58:12 AM
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack