Functional mapping of brain synapses by the enriching activity-marker SynaptoZip

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01335-4
• Publication Date: 2017-10-25T21:45:41Z
• Authors: Mattia Ferro; Jacopo Lamanna; Maddalena Ripamonti; Gabriella Racchetti; Alessandro Arena; Sara Spadini; Giovanni Montesano; Riccardo Cortese; Vincenzo Zimarino; Antonio Malgaroli
• Keywords: Mammalian brain; Neuronal Circuits; Stimulus (psychology); Biological neural network

Ideally, elucidating the role of specific brain circuits in animal behavior would require ability to measure activity at all involved synapses, possibly with unrestricted field view, thus even those boutons deeply located into brain. Here, we introduce and validate an efficient scheme reporting synaptic vesicle cycling vivo. This is based on SynaptoZip, a genetically encoded molecule deploying vesicular lumen bait moiety designed capture upon exocytosis labeled alien peptide, Synbond. The resulting signal cumulative stores number events occurring individual synapses. Since this functional enduring measurable both online ex post, SynaptoZip provides unique method for analysis history regions several millimeters below surface. We show its broad applicability by stimulus-evoked spontaneous circuit wide cortical fields, anesthetized freely moving animals.