| First Author | Katori S | Year | 2017 |
| Journal | Sci Rep | Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 15908 |
| PubMed ID | 29162883 | Mgi Jnum | J:259649 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6148131 | Doi | 10.1038/s41598-017-16120-y |
| Citation | Katori S, et al. (2017) Protocadherin-alphaC2 is required for diffuse projections of serotonergic axons. Sci Rep 7(1):15908 |
| abstractText | Serotonergic axons extend diffuse projections throughout various brain areas, and serotonergic system disruption causes neuropsychiatric diseases. Loss of the cytoplasmic region of protocadherin-alpha (Pcdh-alpha) family proteins, products of the diverse clustered Pcdh genes, causes unbalanced distributions (densification and sparsification) of serotonergic axons in various target regions. However, which Pcdh-alpha member(s) are responsible for the phenotype is unknown. Here we demonstrated that Pcdh-alphaC2 (alphaC2), a Pcdh-alpha isoform, was highly expressed in serotonergic neurons, and was required for normal diffusion in single-axon-level analyses of serotonergic axons. The loss of alphaC2 from serotonergic neurons, but not from their target brain regions, led to unbalanced distributions of serotonergic axons. Our results suggest that alphaC2 expressed in serotonergic neurons is required for serotonergic axon diffusion in various brain areas. The alphaC2 extracellular domain displays homophilic binding activity, suggesting that its homophilic interaction between serotonergic axons regulates axonal density via alphaC2''s cytoplasmic domain. |
