, 2010, Farrant and Cull-Candy, 2010 and Guzman and Jonas, this website 2010) ( Table 1). What consequences
might the unique properties of CKAMP44 have on hippocampal function? To discern this, the authors used overexpression of CKAMP44 in combination with CKAMP44 KO mice. They first examined CA1 pyramidal neurons, which express low levels of CKAMP44. They show that overexpression slows the decay of mEPSCs and reduces PPR, consistent with the slowing of recovery from desensitization. Interestingly, in contrast to the effects of overexpression, the CKAMP44 KO has no effect on EPSC kinetics, as might be predicted by the low expression level. The authors repeated these experiments in dentate granule neurons where CKAMP44 is expressed at high levels. Overexpression of CKAMP44 has no effect on PPR, but
in the KO, PPR is enhanced. It would be of interest to know whether the decay of EPSCs in KO granule neurons is accelerated as would be expected. These findings are of considerable interest because, except for a few types of synapses where the probability of release is high and/or multiple active zones are present, desensitization is not thought to play a prominent role in PPR (Silver and Kanichay, 2008). How widespread might the role of CKAMP44 in the CNS be? CKAM44 expression is especially high in the dentate gyrus compared to many other regions of the brain, raising the possibility Androgen Receptor high throughput screening that its role could be more restricted than that of TARPs. It is not clear what VEGFR inhibitor advantage may be conferred by having TARPs and CKAMP44 interacting with the same AMPAR, given that their actions are antagonistic, at least in terms of their effects on desensitization. Synapse differentially induced
gene 1 (SynDIG1) is a candidate AMPAR auxiliary subunit that was identified through application of a microarray approach to the expression profile of the cerebella of lurcher mice, which show defects in neuronal differentiation. One of the most highly differentially expressed genes was SynDIG1 ( Díaz et al., 2002), which is upregulated during postnatal development in wild-type, but not lurcher, cerebella. SynDIG1 is a type II transmembrane protein that regulates AMPAR content at developing hippocampal synapses ( Kalashnikova et al., 2010). Immunocytochemical experiments in cultured hippocampal neurons show that, while SynDIG1 clusters at excitatory synapses, most clusters are nonsynaptic, but are nonetheless associated with GluA2, suggesting that it might bind to GluA2. Indeed, anti-SynDIG1 antibodies coimmunoprecipiate GluA2 from brain extracts and the two proteins cluster on the surface of heterologous cells. This clustering requires an intact extracellular C terminus of SynDIG1. Overepression of SynDIG1 increases synapse density and increases the size and fluorescent intensity of GluA1 puncta, but not NR1 puncta.