Miniature Neurotransmission Regulates Drosophila Synaptic Structural Maturation

Overview

Journal Neuron

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Neurology

Date 2014 May 10

PMID 24811381

Citations 62

Authors

Ben Jiwon Choi

Wendy L Imlach

Wei Jiao

Verena Wolfram

Ying Wu

Mark Grbic

Carolina Cela

Richard A Baines

Michael N Nitabach

Brian D McCabe

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Miniature neurotransmission is the transsynaptic process where single synaptic vesicles spontaneously released from presynaptic neurons induce miniature postsynaptic potentials. Since their discovery over 60 years ago, miniature events have been found at every chemical synapse studied. However, the in vivo necessity for these small-amplitude events has remained enigmatic. Here, we show that miniature neurotransmission is required for the normal structural maturation of Drosophila glutamatergic synapses in a developmental role that is not shared by evoked neurotransmission. Conversely, we find that increasing miniature events is sufficient to induce synaptic terminal growth. We show that miniature neurotransmission acts locally at terminals to regulate synapse maturation via a Trio guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) and Rac1 GTPase molecular signaling pathway. Our results establish that miniature neurotransmission, a universal but often-overlooked feature of synapses, has unique and essential functions in vivo.

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