- Matt, Lucas;
- Kim, Karam;
- Hergarden, Anne C;
- Patriarchi, Tommaso;
- Malik, Zulfiqar A;
- Park, Deborah K;
- Chowdhury, Dhrubajyoti;
- Buonarati, Olivia R;
- Henderson, Peter B;
- Saraç, Çiğdem Gökçek;
- Zhang, Yonghong;
- Mohapatra, Durga;
- Horne, Mary C;
- Ames, James B;
- Hell, Johannes W
Despite the central role PSD-95 plays in anchoring postsynaptic AMPARs, how PSD-95 itself is tethered to postsynaptic sites is not well understood. Here we show that the F-actin binding protein α-actinin binds to the very N terminus of PSD-95. Knockdown (KD) of α-actinin phenocopies KD of PSD-95. Mutating lysine at position 10 or lysine at position 11 of PSD-95 to glutamate, or glutamate at position 53 or glutamate and aspartate at positions 213 and 217 of α-actinin, respectively, to lysine impairs, in parallel, PSD-95 binding to α-actinin and postsynaptic localization of PSD-95 and AMPARs. These experiments identify α-actinin as a critical PSD-95 anchor tethering the AMPAR-PSD-95 complex to postsynaptic sites.