Analysis of Dendritic Development

Rat hippocampal neurons are an ideal model system for analyzing dendritic development. We can localize gene products, as in the figure below, where neurons are immunostained with antibodies to MAP2 (green), which localizes to the dendritic arbor, and the presynaptic vesicle protein Synapsin 1 (red), which reveals presynaptic contacts along the dendrites. These data show that, although dendrites form within 1-2 days in vitro, their outgrowth is stagnant until about 5 days in vitro (DIV). They also show that in this system, robust synapse formation does not begin several days after dendritic outgrowth.