JCB logo
Accuri Cytometers
  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents
A correction to this article has been published: J. Cell Biol. 144 (4) 803
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF, 553K)
Right arrow PPT slides of all figures
Right arrow Correction (v144,p803)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new content in the JCB
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Zakharenko, S.
Right arrow Articles by Popov, S. V.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Zakharenko, S.
Right arrow Articles by Popov, S. V.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Facebook   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

© The Rockefeller University Press, 0021-9525/1999//507 $5.00
The Journal of Cell Biology, Volume 144, Number 3, , 1999 507-518

Regular Articles

Neurotransmitter Secretion along Growing Nerve Processes: Comparison with Synaptic Vesicle Exocytosis



Stanislav Zakharenko, Sunghoe Chang, Michael O'Donoghue, and Sergey V. Popov

Department of Physiology and Biophysics M/C 901, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois 60612

In mature neurons, synaptic vesicles continuously recycle within the presynaptic nerve terminal. In developing axons which are free of contact with a postsynaptic target, constitutive membrane recycling is not localized to the nerve terminal; instead, plasma membrane components undergo cycles of exoendocytosis throughout the whole axonal surface (Matteoli et al., 1992; Kraszewski et al., 1995). Moreover, in growing Xenopus spinal cord neurons in culture, acetylcholine (ACh) is spontaneously secreted in the quantal fashion along the axonal shaft (Evers et al., 1989; Antonov et al., 1998). Here we demonstrate that in Xenopus neurons ACh secretion is mediated by vesicles which recycle locally within the axon. Similar to neurotransmitter release at the presynaptic nerve terminal, ACh secretion along the axon could be elicited by the action potential or by hypertonic solutions. We found that the parameters of neurotransmitter secretion at the nerve terminal and at the middle axon were strikingly similar. These results lead us to conclude that, as in the case of the presynaptic nerve terminal, synaptic vesicles involved in neurotransmitter release along the axon contain a complement of proteins for vesicle docking and Ca2+-dependent fusion. Taken together, our results support the idea that, in developing axons, the rudimentary machinery for quantal neurotransmitter secretion is distributed throughout the whole axonal surface. Maturation of this machinery in the process of synaptic development would improve the fidelity of synaptic transmission during high-frequency stimulation of the presynaptic cell.

Key Words: secretion • exocytosis • synaptic vesicle • acetylcholine • dynamin

Abbreviations used in this paper: ACh, acetylcholine; ANOVA, analysis of variance; BFA, Brefeldin A; ESC, evoked synaptic current; PPF, paired pulse facilitation; SSC, spontaneous synaptic current.

S. Zakharenko and S. Cheng contributed equally to this work.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Facebook Facebook   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:



  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents