Fig. 6: Neuroprotection of cultured striatal neurons against NMDA-induced excitotoxicity by PKD1.

A Scheme of the vector construct used for neuronal expression of a constitutively active PKD1 mutant (PKD1-Ca). GFP alone or fused to PKD1-Ca was cloned under the neurospecific human synapsin promoter (hSYN). B Representative confocal microscopy images of cultured rat primary mature striatal neuron transfected with GFP (Control) or PKD1-Ca and stained with p-PKD (S⁹¹⁶) and DAPI. Scale bar: 25 µm. C Representative confocal microscopy images of GFP, DARPP-32 and DAPI signal of neurons transduced with lentiviral particles for GFP and GFP-PKD1-Ca expression treated or not with NMDA for 2 h. Scale bar: 40 µm. Top Graph represents the percentage of DARPP-32⁺ surviving neurons after NMDA treatment, relative to total GFP⁺ neurons in untreated conditions. Bottom graph represents the percentage of GFP⁺ neurons bearing condensed nuclei relative to total GFP⁺ neurons (n = 20–60 neurons per condition; n = 4 independent experiments). All data are represented as mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 or ***P < 0.001 using one-way ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni’s post hoc test.