Kiss-me-quick synapses

摘要

Wouldn't it be easier to extract the secrets of the synapse if we could see what is going on there? For example, if we could just watch a synaptic vesicle fusing with the membrane and then being recycled, we could finally answer some of the questions about how the recycling is accomplished. Two papers in Nature use fluorescent markers to achieve just that, and reach complementary conclusions about vesicle recycling at small synapses. Our understanding of synaptic exocytosis-the process by which individual vesicles fuse with the cell membrane and release their loads of neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft-has come on in leaps and bounds over recent years.