Quantitative Super-resolution of Synaptic Proteins

Single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) recently became more and more popular for studying the synaptic architecture, providing substantial advances in modern neuroscience. Recently developed methods based on DNA origami calibration transformed SML into an effective quantitative tool able to estimate the oligomeric states of macromolecular complexes. In this work, we apply a recently developed quantitative method based on stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (qSTORM) to study the distribution of the synaptic proteins Homer in hippocampal neurons. Our experiments prove qSTORM as a suitable tool for novel quantitative insights into the nanoscale organization of excitatory synapses.