Regulation of the maintenance of basal but not apical dendrites

A cool study shows that knocking out the regulatory protein Epac2 in mice has large effects on the structural stability of basal dendrites in pyramidal neurons. This is not the first study to have demonstrated this type of selective regulation, but it's still surprising. The apical dendrites are so similar and close to the basal ones; why wouldn't a regulatory molecule affect both classes? The fact that they are regulated differentially shows that each structural component of neurons is finely tuned. This is weak evidence in favor of the theory that the neuronal morphology carries lots of information.

Reference Srivastava DP, Woolfrey KM, Jones KA, Anderson CT, Smith KR, et al. (2012) An Autism-Associated Variant of Epac2 Reveals a Role for Ras/Epac2 Signaling in Controlling Basal Dendrite Maintenance in Mice. PLoS Biol 10(6): e1001350. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001350