Acute destruction of the synaptic ribbon reveals a role for the ribbon in vesicle priming

In vision, balance, and hearing, sensory receptor cells translate sensory stimuli into electrical signals whose amplitude is graded with stimulus intensity. The output synapses of these sensory neurons must provide fast signaling to follow rapidly changing stimuli, while also transmitting graded information covering a wide range of stimulus intensity and sustained for long time periods. To meet these demands, specialized machinery for transmitter release—the synaptic ribbon—has evolved at the synaptic outputs of these neurons. Here we show that acute disruption of synaptic ribbons by photodamage to the ribbon dramatically reduces both sustained and transient components of neurotransmitter release in mouse bipolar cells and salamander cones, without affecting the ultrastructure of the ribbon or its ability to localize synaptic vesicles to the active zone. Our results indicate that ribbons mediate slow as well as fast signaling at sensory synapses, and support an additional role for the synaptic ribbon in priming vesicles for exocytosis at active zones.