Proteins in the Postsynaptic Density of the Central Nervous System

The postsynaptic density (PSD) is a cytoskeletal specialization that is involved in the regulation of synaptic signal transduction. Mainly due to the hydrophobic nature of the PSD proteins, characterization of this intriguing structure at the molecular level has been very intractable until early 1990s. However, recent development in protein microchemistry and molecular cloning techniques allowed identification and characterization of the PSD proteins. As expected, cytoskeletal proteins constitute major components of the PSD. Other major PSD proteins have been identified by protein sequencing, and their genes were used to fish out associating proteins by yeast two-hybrid system expanding our knowledge on the molecular structure of the PSD significantly. In this review, I summarize proteins that are so far identified focusing on the glutamatergic synapses.