Long-term potentiation through calcium-mediated N-Cadherin interaction is tightly controlled by the three-dimensional architecture of the synapse
- Poster presentation: Twenty Second Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS*2013. Paris, France. 13-18 July 2013. The synaptic cleft is an extracellular domain that is capable of relaying a presynaptically received electrical signal by diffusive neurotransmitters to the postsynaptic membrane. The cleft is trans-synaptically bridged by ring-like shaped clusters of pre- and postsynaptically localized calcium-dependent adhesion proteins of the N-Cadherin type and is possibly the smallest intercircuit in nervous systems [1]. The strength of association between the pre- and postsynaptic membranes can account for synaptic plasticity such as long-term potentiation [2]. Through neuronal activity the intra- and extracellular calcium levels are modulated through calcium exchangers embedded in the pre- and postsynaptic membrane. Variations of the concentration of cleft calcium induces changes in the N-Cadherin-zipper, that in synaptic resting states is rigid and tightly connects the pre- and postsynaptic domain. During synaptic activity calcium concentrations are hypothesized to drop below critical thresholds which leads to loosening of the N-Cadherin connections and subsequently "unzips" the Cadherin-mediated connection. These processes may result in changes in synaptic strength [2]. In order to investigate the calcium-mediated N-Cadherin dynamics at the synaptic cleft, we developed a three-dimensional model including the cleft morphology and all prominent calcium exchangers and corresponding density distributions [3-6]. The necessity for a fully three-dimensional model becomes apparent, when investigating the effects of the spatial architecture of the synapse [7], [8]. Our data show, that the localization of calcium channels with respect to the N-Cadherin ring has substantial effects on the time-scales on which the Cadherin-zipper switches between states, ranging from seconds to minutes. This will have significant effects on synaptic signaling. Furthermore we see, that high-frequency action potential firing can only be relayed to the Calcium/N-Cadherin-system at a synapse under precise spatial synaptic reorganization.
Author: | Stephan Grein, Stefanie Bunse, Erich Schuman, Sean Gillian Queisser |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-313533 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-14-S1-P321 |
ISSN: | 1471-2202 |
Parent Title (English): | BMC neuroscience |
Publisher: | BioMed Central |
Place of publication: | London |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2013 |
Date of first Publication: | 2013/07/08 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2013/08/29 |
Volume: | 14 |
Issue: | (Suppl 1):P321 |
Page Number: | 2 |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 2 |
Note: | © 2013 Grein et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 40080154X |
Institutes: | Informatik und Mathematik / Informatik |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme / 004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Sammlung Biologie / Sondersammelgebiets-Volltexte | |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 2.0 |