Differential Co-release of Two Neurotransmitters from a Vesicle Fusion Pore in Mammalian Adrenal Chromaffin Cells

• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.01.031
• Publication Date: 2019-02-14T15:40:57Z
• Authors: Quanfeng Zhang; Bin Liu; Qihui Wu; Bing Liu; Yinglin Li; Suhua Sun; Yuan Wang; Xi Wu; Zuying Chai; Xiaohan Jiang; Xiaoyao Liu; Meiqin Hu; Yeshi Wang; Yunting Yang; Li Wang; Xinjiang Kang; Yingfei Xiong; Yang Zhou; Xiaoke Chen; Lianghong Zheng; Bo Zhang; Changhe Wang; Feipeng Zhu; Zhuan Zhou
• Keywords: Chromaffin cell

Co-release of multiple neurotransmitters from secretory vesicles is common in neurons and neuroendocrine cells. However, whether and how the transmitters co-released from a single vesicle are differentially regulated remains unknown. In matrix-containing dense-core vesicles (DCVs) in chromaffin cells, there are two modes of catecholamine (CA) release from a single DCV: quantal and sub-quantal. By combining two microelectrodes to simultaneously record co-release of the native CA and ATP from a DCV, we report that (1) CA and ATP were co-released during a DCV fusion; (2) during kiss-and-run (KAR) fusion, the co-released CA was sub-quantal, whereas the co-released ATP was quantal; and (3) knockdown and knockout of the DCV matrix led to quantal co-release of both CA and ATP even in KAR mode. These findings strongly imply that, in contrast to sub-quantal CA release in chromaffin cells, fast synaptic transmission without transmitter-matrix binding is mediated exclusively via quantal release in neurons.