Kinetic analysis of neuronal SNARE protein interactions

Abstract

Electrical synapseElectrical synapses were thought to be common in invertebrates and non-mammalian vertebrates, and only rarely found in mammals. Research in the last few decades showed that, although less numerous, electrical synapses are in fact widely distributed in the mammalian brain (Connors and Long, 2004;Nagy et al., 2018). The defining feature of the electrical synapse is a direct contact between neurons and continuity of their cytoplasm Given that this work focuses on the events that cause the synaptic vesicles to fuse with the plasma membrane, the following sections will address the presynapse in more detail.