Earlier in 2018, Professor Mingjie Zhang and his research team published a paper in the journal Cell, titled “Reconstituted postsynaptic density as a molecular platform for understanding synapse formation and plasticity”. This paper has recently been selected as one of the “Best Of Cell 2018” research article collections to showcase this past year’s most exciting cell biology research.
In this study, Zeng et al. employed a biochemical reconstitution approach to show that multivalent interaction networks formed by major excitatory postsynaptic density (PSD) scaffold proteins led to the formation of PSD-like assemblies via phase separation both in solution and on supported membrane bilayers. The reconstituted PSD-like assemblies can cluster receptors, selectively concentrate enzymes, promote actin bundle formation, and expel inhibitory postsynaptic proteins.
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Menglong Zeng, Xudong Chen, Dongshi Guan, Jia Xu, Haowei Wu, Penger Tong, Mingjie Zhang. Reconstituted Postsynaptic Density as a Molecular Platform for Understanding Synapse Formation and Plasticity. Cell, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.047
