Retinal bipolar neurons transmit visual information by means of graded synaptic potentials that spread to the synaptic terminal without sodium-dependent action potentials. Although action potentials are not involved, voltage-dependent sodium channels may enhance subthreshold depolarizing potentials in the dendrites and soma of bipolar cells, as they do in other CNS neurons. We report here that voltage-dependent sodium currents are observed in a subset of bipolar neurons from goldfish retina. Single-cell reverse transcriptase-PCR identified four different sodium channel α subunits in goldfish bipolar cells, putatively corresponding to the mammalian voltage-gated sodium channels Nav1.1, Nav1.2, Nav1.3, and Nav1.6. The amount of sodium current was largest in cells with smaller synaptic terminals, which probably represent cone bipolar cells. Localization of sodium channel immunoreactivity in goldfish retina confirmed the expression of voltage-gated sodium channels in cone bipolar cells of both ON and OFF types. Both immunocytochemical and physiological evidence suggests that the sodium channels are localized to the soma and dendrites where they may play a role in transmission of synaptic signals, particularly in the long, thin dendrites of cone bipolar cells.
The cytomatrix at the active zone (CAZ) is a macromolecular complex that facilitates the supply of release-ready synaptic vesicles to support neurotransmitter release at synapses. To reveal the dynamics of this supply process in living synapses, we used super-resolution imaging to track single vesicles at voltage-clamped presynaptic terminals of retinal bipolar neurons, whose CAZ contains a specialized structure—the synaptic ribbon—that supports both fast, transient and slow, sustained modes of transmission. We find that the synaptic ribbon serves a dual function as a conduit for diffusion of synaptic vesicles and a platform for vesicles to fuse distal to the plasma membrane itself, via compound fusion. The combination of these functions allows the ribbon-type CAZ to achieve the continuous transmitter release required by synapses of neurons that carry tonic, graded visual signals in the retina.DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.13245.001
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