Volume 17 Issue 1, January 2012

SHANK3 is involved in dendritic spine development in hippocampal neurons. Hippocampal neurons were transfected with SHANK3 WTor mutated forms and RFP, cultured for 3 days in vitro after late transfection, fixed and stained with anti-GFP and anti-RFP. Overexpression of SHANK3^WT (middle image) causes a significant increase in spine density compared to mutated forms of the protein (Shank3^R300C up left, Shank3^R12C down left, Shank3^Q321R top right and Shank3^STOP down right, respectively). For more info on this topic, please refer to the article by Durand et al. on pages 71–84.