PUBLICATION
Nonequivalent release sites govern synaptic depression
- Authors
- Wen, H., McGinley, M.J., Mandel, G., Brehm, P.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-151231-4
- Date
- 2016
- Source
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113(3): E378-86 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Keywords
- multinomial analysis, neuromuscular, synaptic plasticity, synaptic vesicle, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Electric Stimulation
- Green Fluorescent Proteins/metabolism
- Mice, Transgenic
- Motor Neurons/physiology
- Neuromuscular Junction/physiology
- Neuronal Plasticity/physiology*
- Probability
- Reproducibility of Results
- Synapses/physiology*
- Time Factors
- Zebrafish/physiology
- PubMed
- 26715759 Full text @ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
Citation
Wen, H., McGinley, M.J., Mandel, G., Brehm, P. (2016) Nonequivalent release sites govern synaptic depression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 113(3):E378-86.
Abstract
Synaptic depression is prominent among synapses, but the underlying mechanisms remain uncertain. Here, we use paired patch clamp recording to study neuromuscular transmission between the caudal primary motor neuron and target skeletal muscle in zebrafish. This synapse has an unusually low number of release sites, all with high probabilities of release in response to low-frequency stimulation. During high-frequency stimulation, the synapse undergoes short-term depression and reaches steady-state levels of transmission that sustain the swimming behavior. To determine the release parameters underlying this steady state, we applied variance analysis. Our analysis revealed two functionally distinct subclasses of release sites differing by over 60-fold in rates of vesicle reloading. A slow reloading class requires seconds to recover and contributes to depression onset but not the steady-state transmission. By contrast, a fast reloading class recovers within tens of milliseconds and is solely responsible for steady-state transmission. Thus, in contrast to most current models that assign levels of steady-state depression to vesicle availability, our findings instead assign this function to nonuniform release site kinetics. The duality of active-site properties accounts for the highly nonlinear dependence of steady-state depression levels on frequency.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping