Altered branching patterns of Purkinje cells in mouse model for cortical development disorder

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 1; no. 1; p. 122
• Main Authors: Kim, Jinkyung, Kwon, Namseop, Chang, Soeun, Kim, Kyong-Tai, Lee, Dongmyeong, Kim, Seunghwan, Yun, So Jeong, Hwang, Daehee, Kim, Jee Woong, Hwu, Yeukuang, Margaritondo, Giorgio, Je, Jung Ho, Rhyu, Im Joo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 18-10-2011; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/1647/245; 631/208/366; 631/57; Animals; Brain architecture; Cerebellum; Cerebral Cortex - diagnostic imaging; Cerebral Cortex - growth & development; Cerebral Cortex - pathology; Cortex; Data processing; Dendrites; Dendrites - diagnostic imaging; Dendrites - pathology; Disease Models, Animal; Fractals; Humanities and Social Sciences; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Lissencephaly; Lissencephaly - pathology; Malformations of Cortical Development - pathology; Mice; Mice, Neurologic Mutants; multidisciplinary; Neurodevelopmental disorders; Purkinje cells; Purkinje Cells - diagnostic imaging; Purkinje Cells - pathology; Science; Signal processing; Therapeutic applications; Tomography; X-Ray Microtomography
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep00122

Disrupted cortical cytoarchitecture in cerebellum is a typical pathology in reeler. Particularly interesting are structural problems at the cellular level: dendritic morphology has important functional implication in signal processing. Here we describe a combinatorial imaging method of synchrotron X-ray microtomography with Golgi staining, which can deliver 3-dimensional(3-D) micro-architectures of Purkinje cell(PC) dendrites and give access to quantitative information in 3-D geometry. In reeler, we visualized in 3-D geometry the shape alterations of planar PC dendrites (i.e., abnormal 3-D arborization). Despite these alterations, the 3-D quantitative analysis of the branching patterns showed no significant changes of the 77 ± 8° branch angle, whereas the branch segment length strongly increased with large fluctuations, comparing to control. The 3-D fractal dimension of the PCs decreased from 1.723 to 1.254, indicating a significant reduction of dendritic complexity. This study provides insights into etiologies and further potential treatment options for lissencephaly and various neurodevelopmental disorders.