Abstract
Neurons and their function of conveying information across a chemical synapse are highly regulated systems. Impacts on their functional viability can occur independently from changes in morphology. Here we describe a method to assess the size of synaptic vesicle pools using live cell fluorescence imaging and a genetically encoded probe (pHluorin). Assessing functional parameters such as the size of synaptic vesicle pools can be a valuable addition to common assays of neuronal cell viability as they demonstrate that key cellular functions are intact.
The original version of this chapter was revised. The erratum to this chapter is available at: DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-6960-9_23
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ryan TA, Smith SJ (1995) Vesicle pool mobilization during action potential firing at hippocampal synapses. Neuron 14(5):983–989
Wienisch M, Klingauf J (2006) Vesicular proteins exocytosed and subsequently retrieved by compensatory endocytosis are nonidentical. Nat Neurosci 9(8):1019–1027
Atwood HL, Karunanithi S (2002) Diversification of synaptic strength: presynaptic elements. Nat Rev Neurosci 3(7):497–516
Wang X, Pinter MJ, Rich MM (2016) Reversible recruitment of a homeostatic reserve pool of synaptic vesicles underlies rapid homeostatic plasticity of quantal content. J Neurosci 36(3):828–836
Waters J, Smith SJ (2002) Vesicle pool partitioning influences presynaptic diversity and weighting in rat hippocampal synapses. J Physiol 541(Pt 3):811–823
Rosenmund C, Stevens CF (1996) Definition of the readily releasable pool of vesicles at hippocampal synapses. Neuron 16(6):1197–1207
Wilhelm BG, Groemer TW, Rizzoli SO (2010) The same synaptic vesicles drive active and spontaneous release. Nat Neurosci 13(12):1454–1456
Schikorski T, Stevens CF (2001) Morphological correlates of functionally defined synaptic vesicle populations. Nat Neurosci 4(4):391–395
Jung J, Loy K, Schilling EM et al (2014) The antidepressant fluoxetine mobilizes vesicles to the recycling pool of rat hippocampal synapses during high activity. Mol Neurobiol 49(2):916–930
Tagliatti E, Fadda M, Falace A et al (2016) Arf6 regulates the cycling and the readily releasable pool of synaptic vesicles at hippocampal synapse. Elife 5:e10116
Welzel O, Tischbirek CH, Jung J et al (2010) Synapse clusters are preferentially formed by synapses with large recycling pool sizes. PLoS One 5(10):e13514
Ryan TA, Li L, Chin LS et al (1996) Synaptic vesicle recycling in synapsin I knock-out mice. J Cell Biol 134(5):1219–1227
Marra V, Burden JJ, Crawford F et al (2014) Ultrastructural readout of functional synaptic vesicle pools in hippocampal slices based on FM dye labeling and photoconversion. Nat Protoc 9(6):1337–1347
Welzel O, Henkel AW, Stroebel AM et al (2011) Systematic heterogeneity of fractional vesicle pool sizes and release rates of hippocampal synapses. Biophys J 100(3):593–601
Miesenbock G, De Angelis DA, Rothman JE (1998) Visualizing secretion and synaptic transmission with pH-sensitive green fluorescent proteins. Nature 394(6689):192–195
Hua Y, Sinha R, Thiel CS et al (2011) A readily retrievable pool of synaptic vesicles. Nat Neurosci 14(7):833–839
Sankaranarayanan S, De Angelis D, Rothman JE et al (2000) The use of pHluorins for optical measurements of presynaptic activity. Biophys J 79(4):2199–2208
Rother M, Brauner JM, Ebert K et al (2014) Dynamic properties of the alkaline vesicle population at hippocampal synapses. PLoS One 9(7):e102723
Li Z, Burrone J, Tyler WJ et al (2005) Synaptic vesicle recycling studied in transgenic mice expressing synaptopHluorin. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 102(17):6131–6136
Groemer TW, Klingauf J (2007) Synaptic vesicles recycling spontaneously and during activity belong to the same vesicle pool. Nat Neurosci 10(2):145–147
Sbalzarini IF, Koumoutsakos P (2005) Feature point tracking and trajectory analysis for video imaging in cell biology. J Struct Biol 151(2):182–195
Kaech S, Banker G (2006) Culturing hippocampal neurons. Nat Protoc 1(5):2406–2415
Takahashi K, Tanabe K, Ohnuki M et al (2007) Induction of pluripotent stem cells from adult human fibroblasts by defined factors. Cell 131(5):861–872
Threadgill R, Bobb K, Ghosh A (1997) Regulation of dendritic growth and remodeling by Rho, Rac, and Cdc42. Neuron 19(3):625–634
Transfection of mammalian cells by electroporation (2006) Nat Method. 3(1):67–68
Zhang XS, Huang J, Zhan CQ et al (2016) Different influences of lipofection and electrotransfection on in vitro gene delivery to primary cultured cortex neurons. Pain Physician 19(3):189–196
Royle SJ, Granseth B, Odermatt B et al (2008) Imaging phluorin-based probes at hippocampal synapses. Methods Mol Biol 457:293–303
Jia H, Rochefort NL, Chen X et al (2011) In vivo two-photon imaging of sensory-evoked dendritic calcium signals in cortical neurons. Nat Protoc 6(1):28–35
Button KS, Ioannidis JP, Mokrysz C et al (2013) Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci 14(5):365–376
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Else-Kröner-Fresenius Stiftung grant 2012_A35.
J.K.W. performed this work in fulfillment of the requirements for obtaining the degree “Dr. rer. biol. hum.” at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Supplementary Files
Exemplary MATLAB code for processing a vesicle pool size recording can be found in the GitHub repository available at https://github.com/janawrosch/VesiclePoolSizes.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Wrosch, J.K., Groemer, T.W. (2017). Functional Viability: Measurement of Synaptic Vesicle Pool Sizes. In: Gilbert, D., Friedrich, O. (eds) Cell Viability Assays. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1601. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6960-9_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6960-9_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-6959-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-6960-9
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols