Distinct Relations of Microtubules and Actin Filaments with Dendritic Architecture

Sumit Nanda; Shatabdi Bhattacharjee; Daniel N Cox; Giorgio A Ascoli

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.101865

Distinct Relations of Microtubules and Actin Filaments with Dendritic Architecture

iScience. 2020 Nov 27;23(12):101865. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101865. eCollection 2020 Dec 18.

Authors

Sumit Nanda¹, Shatabdi Bhattacharjee², Daniel N Cox², Giorgio A Ascoli^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Neural Informatics, Structures, & Plasticity and Neuroscience Program, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.
² Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
³ Bioengineering Department, Volgenau School of Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22032, USA.

Abstract

Microtubules (MTs) and F-actin (F-act) have long been recognized as key regulators of dendritic morphology. Nevertheless, precisely ascertaining their distinct influences on dendritic trees have been hampered until now by the lack of direct, arbor-wide cytoskeletal quantification. We pair live confocal imaging of fluorescently labeled dendritic arborization (da) neurons in Drosophila larvae with complete multi-signal neural tracing to separately measure MTs and F-act. We demonstrate that dendritic arbor length is highly interrelated with local MT quantity, whereas local F-act enrichment is associated with dendritic branching. Computational simulation of arbor structure solely constrained by experimentally observed subcellular distributions of these cytoskeletal components generated synthetic morphological and molecular patterns statistically equivalent to those of real da neurons, corroborating the efficacy of local MT and F-act in describing dendritic architecture. The analysis and modeling outcomes hold true for the simplest (class I), most complex (class IV), and genetically altered (Formin3 overexpression) da neuron types.

Keywords: Biological Sciences; Cell Biology; Molecular Biology; Neuroscience.

Abstract

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