Fig. 7

Analysis of the contribution of RhoA-ROCK signaling to the functions of Plexin-B2 in contextual fear memory and role of Sema4C-Plexin-B2 signaling in auditory-cued fear memory and anxiety. a, b Analysis of fear response and contextual fear memory at recent (day 2) and remote (day 36) stages in control wild-type mice (PB2 wt), transgenic mice with expression of wild-type Plexin-B2 expression in Plexin-B2 global knockout background (PB2^−/−; PB2^wt) and transgenic mice with a expression of a Plexin-B2 variant lacking the ability of initiating RhoA-ROCK signaling (PB2^−/−; PB2-LOF^RhoA); n = 5 mice for wild-type animals, n = 5 for PB2^−/−; PB2^wt mice (a); n = 9 mice for the control group and n = 8 for PB2^−/−; PB2-LOF^RhoA mice (b). c, d Typical examples of Golgi-stained dendritic segments with dendritic spines (c) and quantitative analysis (d) of spine density over apical dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurons in the treatment groups described above. A minimum of 12 neurons per genotype or treatment from at least 3 mice were analyzed. Two-way ANOVA for repeated measures followed by Bonferroni’s test was performed. P < 0.05 indicated by * as compared to the corresponding control groups. e Analysis of auditory-cued memory at recent (day 3) and remote stages (day 37) in mice of the designated genotypes; n = 7 mice per group for Sema4C^−/− and control group; n = 9 mice for the control group and n = 8 for PB2^−/−; PB2-LOF^RhoA mice; n = 8 for CaMK-PB2^−/− and control group. f Analysis of anxiety behavior in the elevated plus maze (EPM) test evaluating the time spent in the open arm of the EPM apparatus in mice of the designated genotypes; n = 8 mice per group for Sema4C^−/− and control group; n = 9 mice for the control group and n = 8 for PB2^−/−; PB2-LOF^RhoA mice; n = 8 for CaMK-PB2^−/− and control group. In panels a, b, e, f, Student’s t-test was performed; * represents P < 0.05 when mice with fear conditioning and corresponding mock-treated mice were compared and ^† represents P < 0.05 when mutant and corresponding wild-type littermates were tested. Error bars represent SEM