Shibata, A. C., Ueda, H. H., Eto, K., Onda, M., Sato, A., Ohba, T., … & Murakoshi,
H. (2021). Photoactivatable CaMKII induces synaptic plasticity in single synapses. Nature
communications, 12(1), 1-15. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21025-6
Engineered a photoactivatable version of CaMKII (paCaMKII). Two-photon imaging
of dendritic spine volume over time after paCaMKII activation. Imaging of surface GluA1 and
GluA2 subunit expression over time after paCaMKII activation. Whole-cell patch-clamp to
measure glutamate uncaging-evoked uEPSCs from single spine after paCaMKII activation.
Mouse cultured hippocampal and cortical slices
Authors develop a photoactivatable version of CaMKII (paCaMKII) and use it to
directly prove the sufficiency of CaMKII to drive all aspects of LTP (structural and functional) in
individual spiny synapses. They also compared paCaMKII activation of single spines vs.
clusters of nearby spines (5-8 adjacent spines on the same dendrite) and showed that clustered
activation showed enhanced sLTP and Cdc42 activity after 30 minutes.
“[W]e developed a photoactivatable CaMKII (paCaMKII)… By expressing this
optogenetic paCaMKII in hippocampal and cortical neurons, we demonstrate that paCaMKII
activation is sufficient to induce sLTP, recruit AMPARs into dendritic spines, and induce
functional LTP at the single-spine level.”