Fig. 1

Loss of Cr impairs the dendritic architecture of L5a pyramidal neurons. a Immunostaining of CR in the P8 barrel cortex showed that Cr was efficiently disrupted in Cr KO mice. b Western blot analysis of cortex samples indicated that CR was completely deleted at P8 in Cr KO mice. c Immunostaining against RFP in the barrel cortex of CR^CreER;Ai9 mice showed that CR⁺ L5a pyramidal neurons were labeled by RFP. d Immunostaining against RFP combined with morphologic tracing with ImageJ software (apical dendrites are indicated in red; basal dendrites are indicated in black) showed that in Cr KO mice, the complexity of dendrites of RFP⁺ neurons was significantly reduced in the P20 barrel cortex. e The lengths of apical dendrites, basal dendrites and total dendrites were significantly reduced in Cr KO neurons at P20 (Cont, 21 cells from 3 mice; KO, 27 cells from 4 mice). f Sholl analysis of L5a RFP⁺ neurons at P20 showing that, compared with that in control mice, the complexity of dendrites in Cr KO mice was markedly decreased (Cont, 21 cells from 3 mice; KO, 27 cells from 4 mice). Data are presented as the mean ± SEM; E, unpaired Student’s t-test. F, two-way ANOVA, distance x group, repeated measure. **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ****p < 0.0001. Scale bars: a 500 μm; c, d 100 μm