Fig. 6

PFTK1 downregulation leads to faster-growing axons in murine cortical neurons. Primary cortical neurons derived from CD1 embryos (E 14-15) were infected with 100 MOI of adenoviruses expressing GFP alone, GFP and WT-PFTK1 or GFP and D228N-PFTK1. After 12 or 24 h in culture, cells were fixed and stained with Hoechst 33258 (nuclei visualization). Axons of GFP + neurons were measured using Image J. A Values are presented as averages ± SEM from 122-143 cells/treatment/timepoint. Statistics were done using two-way ANOVA followed by Tuckey’s post-hoc. B Same data as in A but presented as axon length relative to the GFP control. C Representative images of primary cortical neurons from E13–14 embryos from HET × HET crosses from WT and KO cultures fixed at the specified times and stained for Tau and Hoechst. D Axon length distribution per genotype from the indicated number of embryos (236–469 cells/embryo) at 16 h in vitro. Each column represents the percentage of cells in the specified range of length for the indicated genotype. Non-treated (NT) cultures were also fixed after 16 and 24 h in vitro. Graph represents the average axon length/genotype/treatment. t-test was used for statistical analysis whenever p value is specified. E 16-h cultures were treated for the last 8 h with 0.5ug/ml of RhoA activator (Cytoskeleton Inc. CN03). Graph represents the average axon length