1. Dopaminergic neurons establish a distinctive axonal arbor with a majority of non-synaptic terminals.
- Author
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Ducrot C, Bourque MJ, Delmas CVL, Racine AS, Guadarrama Bello D, Delignat-Lavaud B, Domenic Lycas M, Fallon A, Michaud-Tardif C, Burke Nanni S, Herborg F, Gether U, Nanci A, Takahashi H, Parent M, and Trudeau LE
- Subjects
- Animals, Calcium-Binding Proteins genetics, Cell Adhesion Molecules, Neuronal genetics, Cell Differentiation, Coculture Techniques methods, Dopamine genetics, Gene Expression Regulation, Green Fluorescent Proteins, Immunohistochemistry, Mice, Transgenic, Nerve Tissue Proteins genetics, Nerve Tissue Proteins metabolism, Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules genetics, Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase genetics, Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase metabolism, Axons physiology, Calcium-Binding Proteins metabolism, Cell Adhesion Molecules, Neuronal metabolism, Corpus Striatum cytology, Dopamine metabolism, Dopaminergic Neurons physiology, Neural Cell Adhesion Molecules metabolism
- Abstract
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 ~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-1α
SS4- and neuroligin-1A+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., (© 2021 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.)- Published
- 2021
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