Fig. 3
Additive effects of LPS/IFG treatment and EN2 overexpression on PC dendritogenesis. Cerebellar slice cultures prepared from 6-day-old FVB/N wildtype (A–C) or L7En-2tg transgenic mice were treated with low (lc) or high (hc) concentrations of LPS/IFG and analyzed at DIV 6. Both genotype and inflammatory stimulation reduced total dendritic length (A) and number of dendritic terminals (B). Consistently, numbers of PC dendrites reaching a higher branch levels are reduced by EN2 expression and inflammatory stimulation (C). This may be taken from the left shift of the Hill curves describing the distribution of segment levels due to inflammatory stimulation (for wildtype, pct,lc, pct,hc, plc,hc, all < 0.002; for L7En-2, pct,lc, pct,hc, plc,hc, all < 0.02) and to the genotype. Genotype effects were assessed at identical treatment levels (pct, pLI lc, pLIhc, all < 0.0003). To facilitate comparison, PC numbers are given as percentages of the total number of PCs analyzed. Statistics were calculated on original values. Segment lengths of wildtype PC dendrites were similar across levels and not influenced by inflammatory stimulation (D; all p-values larger than 0.1). In L7En-2 PCs, inflammation increased segment lengths at levels 1, where the low dose of LPS resulted in a significant increase (pct,lc = 0.0236). The same was true for level 2 (pct,lc = 0.0191). An even further increase was seen with high dose of LPS (pct,hc, = 0.0021). At level 3 the change approached the threshold of significance (pct,hc = 0.0682) in tg PCs. No differences were seen at level 4. Significance levels for genotype differences are indicated by light gray symbols, and those for differences due to LPS/IGF-treatment are indicated by black symbols). Two-way ANOVA *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; nct, wt = 41, nlc, wt = 26, nhc, wt = 32, nct, tg, = 26, nlc, tg = 26, nhc, tg = 11)