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Myelination induces axonal hotspots of synaptic vesicle fusion that promote sheath growth

Almeida, RG; Williamson, JM; Madden, ME; Early, JJ; Voas, MG; Talbot, WS; Bianco, IH; (2021) Myelination induces axonal hotspots of synaptic vesicle fusion that promote sheath growth. Current Biology 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.036. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Myelination of axons by oligodendrocytes enables fast saltatory conduction. Oligodendrocytes are responsive to neuronal activity, which has been shown to induce changes to myelin sheaths, potentially to optimize conduction and neural circuit function. However, the cellular bases of activity-regulated myelination in vivo are unclear, partly due to the difficulty of analyzing individual myelinated axons over time. Activity-regulated myelination occurs in specific neuronal subtypes and can be mediated by synaptic vesicle fusion, but several questions remain: it is unclear whether vesicular fusion occurs stochastically along axons or in discrete hotspots during myelination and whether vesicular fusion regulates myelin targeting, formation, and/or growth. It is also unclear why some neurons, but not others, exhibit activity-regulated myelination. Here, we imaged synaptic vesicle fusion in individual neurons in living zebrafish and documented robust vesicular fusion along axons during myelination. Surprisingly, we found that axonal vesicular fusion increased upon and required myelination. We found that axonal vesicular fusion was enriched in hotspots, namely the heminodal non-myelinated domains into which sheaths grew. Blocking vesicular fusion reduced the stable formation and growth of myelin sheaths, and chemogenetically stimulating neuronal activity promoted sheath growth. Finally, we observed high levels of axonal vesicular fusion only in neuronal subtypes that exhibit activity-regulated myelination. Our results identify a novel "feedforward" mechanism whereby the process of myelination promotes the neuronal activity-regulated signal, vesicular fusion that, in turn, consolidates sheath growth along specific axons selected for myelination.

Type: Article
Title: Myelination induces axonal hotspots of synaptic vesicle fusion that promote sheath growth
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.036
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.036
Language: English
Additional information: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Axon, myelination, neuronal activity, oligodendrocyte, synaptic vesicle fusion, zebrafish
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Neuro, Physiology and Pharmacology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10132025
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