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Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Visualization of Thalamocortical Axon Branching and Synapse Formation in Organotypic Cocultures
Published on: March 28, 2018
Role of pre- and postsynaptic activity in thalamocortical axon branching
Akito Yamada1, Naofumi Uesaka, Yasufumi Hayano
1Neuroscience Laboratories, Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, 1-3 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
Abstract:
Axonal branching is thought to be regulated not only by genetically defined programs but also by neural activity in the developing nervous system. Here we investigated the role of pre- and postsynaptic activity in axon branching in the thalamocortical (TC) projection using organotypic coculture preparations of the thalamus and cortex. Individual TC axons were labeled with enhanced yellow fluorescent protein by transfection into thalamic neurons. To manipulate firing activity, a vector encoding an inward rectifying potassium channel (Kir2.1) was introduced into either thalamic or cortical cells. Firing activity was monitored with multielectrode dishes during culturing. We found that axon branching was markedly suppressed in Kir2.1-overexpressing thalamic cells, in which neural activity was silenced. Similar suppression of TC axon branching was also found when cortical cell activity was reduced by expressing Kir2.1. These results indicate that both pre- and postsynaptic activity is required for TC axon branching during development.
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