Dopaminergic neurons establish a distinctive axonal arbor with a majority of non-synaptic terminals
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Documents
- Fulltext
Submitted manuscript, 17 MB, PDF document
Chemical neurotransmission typically occurs through synapses. Previous ultrastructural examinations of monoamine neuron axon terminals often failed to identify a pre- and postsynaptic coupling, leading to the concept of "volume" transmission. Whether this results from intrinsic properties of these neurons remains undefined. We find that dopaminergic neurons in vitro establish a distinctive axonal arbor compared to glutamatergic or GABAergic neurons in both size and propensity of terminals to avoid direct contact with target neurons. While most dopaminergic varicosities are active and contain exocytosis proteins like synaptotagmin 1, only similar to 20% of these are synaptic. The active zone protein bassoon was found to be enriched in dopaminergic terminals that are in proximity to a target cell. Finally, we found that the proteins neurexin-1 alpha(SS4-) and neuroligin-1(A+B) play a critical role in the formation of synapses by dopamine (DA) neurons. Our findings suggest that DA neurons are endowed with a distinctive developmental connectivity program.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 21791 |
Journal | FASEB Journal |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 8 |
Number of pages | 24 |
ISSN | 0892-6638 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
- active zone, axon terminals, dopamine, exocytosis, synapse, volume transmission, PRESYNAPTIC ACTIVE ZONES, GLUTAMATE CORELEASE, ULTRASTRUCTURAL-LOCALIZATION, TYROSINE-HYDROXYLASE, NEUROLIGIN 1, RELEASE, SYNAPSES, INNERVATION, TRANSMISSION, EXPRESSION
Research areas
ID: 276228561