Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: Somatic Cx36 gap junctions expand the anatomical substrate for electrical coupling in the adult mouse inferior olive

doi: 10.64898/2026.09.09.750283

Figure Lengend Snippet: (A) Calbindin-labeled inferior olive somata with little intervening space (arrowheads). (B) PDX1-Cre × Ai9 dataset and soma-center map; orange points indicate somata with close neighbors. (C) Top, soma-equivalent diameters overlap the distribution of nearest-neighbor center distances, indicating that many somata lie close enough to contact. Bottom, close-neighbor prevalence was compared with packing-aware shuffled null datasets for each slice (S1–S8). Colored points show the prevalence measured from the real soma positions, and matching colored curves show the cumulative distributions obtained after shuffling soma positions within each slice footprint. The rightward displacement of real values relative to the shuffled distributions indicates that close somatic neighbors occur more often than expected from packing constraints alone. Scale bars: A, 50 µ m; B, 200 µ m.

Article Snippet: Sections were incubated at 4°C for 48 h in antibody buffer (2% BSA and 0.4% Triton X-100 in PBS) containing mouse anti-Cx36 primary antibody (1:200 dilution, 2.5 μ g/mL, #37-4600, Thermo Fisher Invitrogen) and guinea pig anti-calbindin antibody (1 μ g/mL, #214 005, Synaptic Systems), with shaking at 80 rpm.

Techniques: Labeling

Journal: bioRxiv

Article Title: Somatic Cx36 gap junctions expand the anatomical substrate for electrical coupling in the adult mouse inferior olive

doi: 10.64898/2026.09.09.750283

Figure Lengend Snippet: Confocal images of Calbindin-labeled olivary somata and Cx36 immunolabeling from multiple examples of closely apposed somata. Images are maximum-intensity projections of optical sections acquired at 0.1 µ m z-steps, with each projected substack spanning less than 2 µ m in z . For each example, single-channel Calbindin and Cx36 panels show the cellular context and punctate Cx36 signal, and the merged panels show Cx36 puncta concentrated at or immediately adjacent to the soma-soma interface. The repeated occurrence of puncta at close somatic contacts supports the presence of Cx36-containing junctional specializations beyond dendritic spines. Scale bars: 5 µ m.

Article Snippet: Sections were incubated at 4°C for 48 h in antibody buffer (2% BSA and 0.4% Triton X-100 in PBS) containing mouse anti-Cx36 primary antibody (1:200 dilution, 2.5 μ g/mL, #37-4600, Thermo Fisher Invitrogen) and guinea pig anti-calbindin antibody (1 μ g/mL, #214 005, Synaptic Systems), with shaking at 80 rpm.

Techniques: Confocal, Labeling, Immunolabeling