![]() Their organization is spatially and temporally controlled by numerous actin binding proteins (ABPs) and microtubule associated proteins, which extensively interact and feed back to each other ( Georges et al., 2008 Coles and Bradke, 2015). F-actin and microtubules (MTs) are the main mediators of neuronal polarity. One of the critical aspects in establishment and maintenance of the dendritic structure is the well-controlled turnover of cytoskeletal elements ( Tsaneva-Atanasova et al., 2009). Dendrites can be morphologically and functionally sub-compartmentalized, particularly in pyramidal neurons ( Shah et al., 2010 Yuan et al., 2015). They integrate information from typically thousands of synaptic inputs, which is then further transmitted via the cell body to the neuron’s single axon ( Magee, 2000 Gulledge et al., 2005). Dendrites are long, highly branched extensions from the cell body that can reach hundreds of microns, forming a widespread and complex arbor. The unique ability of neurons to compute and allocate information relies on their polarized morphology, which comprises several functionally distinct compartments. In this review, we focus on recent developments regarding the role of actin in dendrite morphology, the regulation of actin dynamics by internal and external factors, and the role of F-actin in dendritic protein trafficking. So far, research has been focused on the specific roles of actin in the axon, while it is becoming more and more apparent that in the dendrite, actin is not only confined to dendritic spines, but serves many additional and important functions. Apart from that striking feature, patches of F-actin and deep actin filament bundles have been described along the lengths of neurites. With the development of super-resolution microscopy in the past few years, previously unknown structures of the actin cytoskeleton have been uncovered: a periodic lattice consisting of actin and spectrin seems to pervade not only the whole axon, but also dendrites and even the necks of dendritic spines. For a long time, the most prominent roles that were attributed to actin in neurons were the movement of growth cones, polarized cargo sorting at the axon initial segment, and the dynamic plasticity of dendritic spines, since those compartments contain large accumulations of actin filaments (F-actin) that can be readily visualized using electron- and fluorescence microscopy. DFG Emmy Noether Group ‘Neuronal Protein Transport,’ Center for Molecular Neurobiology (ZMNH), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, GermanyĪctin is a versatile and ubiquitous cytoskeletal protein that plays a major role in both the establishment and the maintenance of neuronal polarity.Anja Konietzny, Julia Bär and Marina Mikhaylova *
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