Therefore, the localization and phosphorylation state of cofilin within dendritic spines can affect the synaptic functions. Cofilin mediated remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton is critical in regulating the shape and functionality of dendritic spines. Cofilin is an actin-severing protein and its activity is regulated by phosphorylation at Ser3. These synapses are often remodeled by the rapid turnover of the actin cytoskeleton, which is regulated by various actin-binding proteins. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.ĭendritic spines are small protrusions located on the surface of neurons, which receive inputs from other neurons and are the active sites for neuronal communications called synapses. The contents and information do not reflect the position or policy of the U.S. Support was also provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (to I.E.), grant number MH67121.
įunding: The support for this work was provided in part by the National Science Foundation: Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (NSF IGERT): Video Bioinformatics grant number DGE 0903667 and NSF 1330110.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All data files are available with the software online at. Received: ApAccepted: JPublished: August 21, 2017Ĭopyright: © 2017 On et al. PLoS ONE 12(8):Įditor: Lin Mei, Augusta University, UNITED STATES Our results also have shown that the activation of cofilin using genetic manipulations leads to immature spines while its inhibition results in an increase in mature spines.Ĭitation: On V, Zahedi A, Ethell IM, Bhanu B (2017) Automated spatio-temporal analysis of dendritic spines and related protein dynamics. The cofilin flux patterns are found to correlate with the dynamic changes in dendritic spine shapes. By tracking dendritic spines over time and using their intensity profiles, the system can analyze the flux patterns of cofilin and other fluorescently stained proteins. The motion of a dendritic spine is used to generate spine energy images, which are used to automatically classify the shape of common dendritic spines such as stubby, mushroom, or thin.
Using spatiotemporal information present in multichannel fluorescence videos, the DendritePA generates a temporal maximum intensity projection that enhances the signal-to-noise ratio of important biological structures, segments and tracks dendritic spines, estimates the density of proteins in spines, and analyzes the flux of proteins through the dendrite/spine boundary. This paper presents Dendrite Protein Analysis (DendritePA), a novel automated pattern recognition software to analyze protein trafficking in neurons.
To date, the flow of cofilin has not been analyzed by automatic means. The analysis of cofilin motility in dendritic spines using fluorescence video-microscopy may allow for the discovery of its effects on synaptic functions. Cofilin and other Actin-regulating proteins are essential in regulating the shape of dendritic spines, which are sites of neuronal communications in the brain, and their malfunctions are implicated in neurodegeneration related to aging.