Activity-dependent extracellular proteolytic cascade cleaves the ECM component brevican to promote structural plasticity

ABSTRACT: The brain's perineuronal extracellular matrix (ECM) is a crucial factor in maintaining the stability of mature brain circuitry. However, how activity-induced synaptic plasticity is achieved in the adult brain with a dense ECM is unclear. We hypothesized that neuronal activity induces cleavage of ECM, creating conditions for synaptic rearrangements. To test this hypothesis, we investigated neuronal activity-dependent proteolytic cleavage of brevican, a prototypical ECM proteoglycan, and the importance of this process for functional and structural synaptic plasticity in the rat hippocampus ex vivo. Our findings reveal that chemical long-term potentiation (cLTP) triggers rapid brevican cleavage in perisynaptic regions through the activation of an extracellular proteolytic cascade involving pr

SUBMITTER: Jeet, Bahadur Singh 

PROVIDER: S-SCDT-10_1038-S44319-025-00644-W | biostudies-other |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other