The dendritic translocation of translin protein in the form of BC1 RNA protein particles in developing rat hippocampal neurons in primary culture.

Neural BC1 RNA is distributed in neuronal dendrites as ribonucleoprotein particles (RNP). Our previous studies indicated the presence of Translin in BC1 RNPs, which is a translational repressor and links a subset of mRNAs to microtubules. In this study, we confirmed that Translin associates with BC1 RNP and we used immunocytochemical methods to examine the subcellular distribution of Translin in developing hippocampal cells in primary cultures. Translin was detected in both the nuclei and cytoplasm of neurons, whereas in glial cells it was localized in the nuclei. Consistent with the reported developmental time course of BC1 RNA expression and dendritic delivery the translocation of Translin to the neuronal dendrites appeared to correlate with neuronal development and differentiation events such as the onset of synaptogenesis in culture. These observations suggest that BC1 RNP or Translin itself may be relevant to the dendritic translation of mRNAs in response to transsynaptic activity.