TY - JOUR TI - Cerebellar and vestibular nuclear synapses in the inferior olive have distinct release kinetics and neurotransmitters AU - Turecek, Josef AU - Regehr, Wade G A2 - Carey, Megan R A2 - Aldrich, Richard W A2 - Bains, Jaideep Singh VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/12/01 SP - e61672 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e61672 DO - 10.7554/eLife.61672 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.61672 AB - The inferior olive (IO) is composed of electrically-coupled neurons that make climbing fiber synapses onto Purkinje cells. Neurons in different IO subnuclei are inhibited by synapses with wide ranging release kinetics. Inhibition can be exclusively synchronous, asynchronous, or a mixture of both. Whether the same boutons, neurons or sources provide these kinetically distinct types of inhibition was not known. We find that in mice the deep cerebellar nuclei (DCN) and vestibular nuclei (VN) are two major sources of inhibition to the IO that are specialized to provide inhibitory input with distinct kinetics. DCN to IO synapses lack fast synaptotagmin isoforms, release neurotransmitter asynchronously, and are exclusively GABAergic. VN to IO synapses contain fast synaptotagmin isoforms, release neurotransmitter synchronously, and are mediated by combined GABAergic and glycinergic transmission. These findings indicate that VN and DCN inhibitory inputs to the IO are suited to control different aspects of IO activity. KW - release kinetics KW - inferior olive KW - glycine KW - inhibition KW - deep cerebellar nuclei KW - GABA JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -