Nature Neuroscience
8, 1188 - 1196 (2005)
Published online: 14 August 2005; Corrected online: 04 September 2005 | doi:10.1038/nn1526
There is an Erratum (October 2005) associated with this Article.
Heterogeneity in synaptic transmission along a Drosophila larval motor axonGiovanna Guerrero1, Dierk F Rieff2, Gautam Agarwal3, Robin W Ball3, Alexander Borst2, Corey S Goodman1, 3, 5
& Ehud Y Isacoff1, 3, 41
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 279 Life Sciences Addition, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 2
Department of Systems and Computational Neurobiology, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Am Klopfersptiz 18 A, 82152 Martinsried, Germany. 3
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, 279 Life Sciences Addition, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 4
Physical Bioscience and Material Science Divisions, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 5
Present address: Renovis, Inc., Two Corporate Drive, South San Francisco, California 94080, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Ehud Y Isacoff ehud@berkeley.edu At the Drosophila melanogaster larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a motor neuron releases glutamate from 30−100 boutons onto the muscle it innervates. How transmission strength is distributed among the boutons of the NMJ is unknown. To address this, we created synapcam, a version of the Ca2+ reporter Cameleon. Synapcam localizes to the postsynaptic terminal and selectively reports Ca2+ influx through glutamate receptors (GluRs) with single-impulse and single-bouton resolution. GluR-based Ca2+ signals were uniform within a given connection (that is, a given bouton/postsynaptic terminal pair) but differed considerably among connections of an NMJ. A steep gradient of transmission strength was observed along axonal branches, from weak proximal connections to strong distal ones. Presynaptic imaging showed a matching axonal gradient, with higher Ca2+ influx and exocytosis at distal boutons. The results suggest that transmission strength is mainly determined presynaptically at the level of individual boutons, possibly by one or more factors existing in a gradient.*Note: In the version of this article initially published online, the second author's name was misspelled. The correct spelling should be Dierk F Reiff. The
error has been corrected in the HTML version of the article. This correction has been appended to the PDF and print versions.
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