Molecular Mechanisms in Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
Fast synaptic transmission is mediated by the secretion from nerve terminals of small nonpeptide chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, which are stored in a specialized secretory organelle, the synaptic vesicle (De Camilli and Jahn 1990). Depolarization of the nerve terminal plasma membrane through an action potential leads to an influx of calcium ions into the cytosol that triggers the exocytosis of synaptic vesicles and the release of their contents. Rapidly after exocytosis, the synaptic vesicle membranes are internalized and reutilized for the formation of new synaptic vesicles that are reloaded with neurotransmitters from the cytosol (McPherson and De Camilli 1994). Several lines of evidence favor the view that this recycling process is mediated, at least in part (Fesce et al. 1994; Mundigl and De Camilli 1994), by the ubiquitous pathway of endocytosis that uses clathrin-coated vesicles. First, clathrin is highly concentrated in nerve terminals (Takei et al. 1995), and a morphological...
