Global Ca2+ Signaling Drives Ribbon-Independent Synaptic Transmission at Rod Bipolar Cell Synapses

Ribbon-type presynaptic active zones are a hallmark of excitatory retinal synapses, and the ribbon organelle is thought to serve as the organizing point of the presynaptic active zone. Imaging of exocytosis from isolated retinal neurons, however, has revealed ectopic release (i.e., release away from ribbons) in significant quantities. Here, we demonstrate in an in vitro mouse retinal slice preparation that ribbon-independent release from rod bipolar cells activates postsynaptic AMPARs on AII amacrine cells. This form of release appears to draw on a unique, ribbon-independent, vesicle pool. Experimental, anatomical, and computational analyses indicate that it is elicited by a significant, global elevation of intraterminal [Ca2+] arising following local buffer saturation. Our observations support the conclusion that ribbon-independent release provides a read-out of the average behavior of all of the active zones in a rod bipolar cell's terminal.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  Journal of Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2014-04-30

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5324-13.2014PMID 24790194PMCID PMC4004811
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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