Transporting Components to the Active Zone
Qian Cai, Ping-Yue Pan, and Zu-Hang Sheng

If you are planning to ship Piccolo, Bassoon, and a bit of N-cadherin and SNAP- 25, you will need some syntabulin, according to Cai et al. this week. Piccolo and its active zone (AZ) compatriots are transported by a complex, which includes syntaxin-1, the kinesin motor KIF5B, and the adaptor protein syntabulin. In fetal rat brains, vesicles containing presynaptic AZ components colocalized with this protein complex. Time-lapse imaging confirmed the colocalization and comovement of these proteins in cultured hippocampal neurons. After RNAi-induced depletion of syntabulin, or use of dominantnegative constructs that interfered with the KIF5B motor complex, GFP (green fluorescent protein)-labeled Bassoon accumulated at the nucleus rather than moving down axons along microtubules. Transport of the AZ precursor vesicles via the syntaxinsyntabulinKIF5B complex was essential for inclusion of AZ components into functional synapses and the activity-dependent recruitment of new presynaptic boutons.

Rats on Ritalin
Jason D. Gray, Michael Punsoni, Nora E. Tabori, Jay T. Melton, Victoria Fanslow, Mary J. Ward, Bojana Zupan, David Menzer, Jackson Rice, Carrie T. Drake, Russell D. Romeo, Wayne G. Brake, Annelyn Torres-Reveron, and Teresa A. Milner

When it comes to drug treatment of children with methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin) for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), ongoing debates are everywhere. One question is whether block of monoamine transporters with this drug leads to lasting alterations in the brain. This week, Gray et al. dosed male rats twice weekly between postnatal day 7 (PND7) and PND35 and then tracked immunocytochemical markers out to PND135. In adult rats, the 4 weeks of postnatal treatment decreased anxiety-like behavior on the elevated plus-maze task. At PND35, but not PND135, MPH-treated rats also showed incr
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Contact: Sara Harris
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Society for Neuroscience
3-Jul-2007