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Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses
Neurons communicate through chemical synapses and electrical synapses (gap junctions). Although these two types of synapses often coexist between neurons, little is known about whether they interact, and whether any interactions between them are important to controlling synaptic strength and circuit...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28317880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14818 |
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author | Liu, Ping Chen, Bojun Mailler, Roger Wang, Zhao-Wen |
author_facet | Liu, Ping Chen, Bojun Mailler, Roger Wang, Zhao-Wen |
author_sort | Liu, Ping |
collection | PubMed |
description | Neurons communicate through chemical synapses and electrical synapses (gap junctions). Although these two types of synapses often coexist between neurons, little is known about whether they interact, and whether any interactions between them are important to controlling synaptic strength and circuit functions. By studying chemical and electrical synapses between premotor interneurons (AVA) and downstream motor neurons (A-MNs) in the Caenorhabditis elegans escape circuit, we found that disrupting either the chemical or electrical synapses causes defective escape response. Gap junctions between AVA and A-MNs only allow antidromic current, but, curiously, disrupting them inhibits chemical transmission. In contrast, disrupting chemical synapses has no effect on the electrical coupling. These results demonstrate that gap junctions may serve as an amplifier of chemical transmission between neurons with both electrical and chemical synapses. The use of antidromic-rectifying gap junctions to amplify chemical transmission is potentially a conserved mechanism in circuit functions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5364397 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53643972017-04-11 Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses Liu, Ping Chen, Bojun Mailler, Roger Wang, Zhao-Wen Nat Commun Article Neurons communicate through chemical synapses and electrical synapses (gap junctions). Although these two types of synapses often coexist between neurons, little is known about whether they interact, and whether any interactions between them are important to controlling synaptic strength and circuit functions. By studying chemical and electrical synapses between premotor interneurons (AVA) and downstream motor neurons (A-MNs) in the Caenorhabditis elegans escape circuit, we found that disrupting either the chemical or electrical synapses causes defective escape response. Gap junctions between AVA and A-MNs only allow antidromic current, but, curiously, disrupting them inhibits chemical transmission. In contrast, disrupting chemical synapses has no effect on the electrical coupling. These results demonstrate that gap junctions may serve as an amplifier of chemical transmission between neurons with both electrical and chemical synapses. The use of antidromic-rectifying gap junctions to amplify chemical transmission is potentially a conserved mechanism in circuit functions. Nature Publishing Group 2017-03-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5364397/ /pubmed/28317880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14818 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Liu, Ping Chen, Bojun Mailler, Roger Wang, Zhao-Wen Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title | Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title_full | Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title_fullStr | Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title_full_unstemmed | Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title_short | Antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
title_sort | antidromic-rectifying gap junctions amplify chemical transmission at functionally mixed electrical-chemical synapses |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5364397/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28317880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14818 |
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