Fig. 5: Repeated treatment with 17β-estradiol (E2) increases the number of dendritic spines positive for pre- and post-synaptic markers.

a Representative confocal images of DIV25 mixed sex cortical neurons triple immunostained for GFP, PSD-95 (post-synaptic protein) and bassoon (pre-synaptic protein). Neurons were treated as outlined in Fig. 4a. b Quantification of linear density of total spine density (open bars) or spines containing PSD-95 (gray and blue solid/hatched bars). Chronic repeated treatment with 17β-estradiol increased the number of spines positive for PSD-95 in control and HA-DISC1ΔCT expressing neurons. c Quantification of linear density of total spine density (open bars) or spines with overlap for bassoon (light gray and light magenta solid/hatched bars). Chronic repeated treatment with 17β-estradiol increased the number of spines overlapping with bassoon in control and HA-DISC1ΔCT expressing neurons. d Quantification of linear density of total spine density (open bars) or spines containing PSD-95 and that overlapped with bassoon (dark gray and teal solid/hatched bars). Chronic repeated treatment with 17β-estradiol increased the number of spines positive for PSD-95 and bassoon in control and HA-DISC1ΔCT expressing neurons. Scale bar = 5 µm.