Compared to the findings for NP rats, ethanol produced effects on fewer proteins in the ACB-shell of P rats (22 for P rats versus 128 for NP rats), with only 5 proteins in common between the two lines of rats (Tables 2 and 3). The altered expression of Synpo, Syngap1 and Ngef (Table 2) in the ethanol-treated group suggests that synaptic changes may have occurred in the ACB-shell of P rats. Ngef had the highest fold increase (1.65) in the ACB-shell of the P rats in the ethanol versus the saline group (Table 2). Ngef regulates ADP ribosylation factor 6, a small GTPase involved in forming a postsynaptic complex of PSD-95 and NMDA receptors at excitatory synapses (Sakagami et al., 2008; Inaba et al., 2004). The up-regulation of synaptopodin (Synpo), which is involved in maintaining activity-dependent enlargement of dendritic spines (Okubo-Suzuki et al., 2008), supports the idea that some form of ethanol-induced synaptic plasticity may have occurred within the ACB-shell of P rats. In contrast to the up-regulation of Ngef and Synpo, the protein expression level of the Ras GTPase-activating
