Frequency- and spike-timing-dependent mitochondrial Ca2+ signaling regulates the metabolic rate and synaptic efficacy in cortical
Abstract
Mitochondrial activity is crucial for the plasticity of central synapses, but how the firing pattern of pre- and postsynaptic neurons affects the mitochondria remains elusive. We recorded changes in the fluorescence of cytosolic and mitochondrial Ca2+ indicators in cell bodies, axons, and dendrites of cortical pyramidal neurons in mouse brain slices while evoking pre- and postsynaptic spikes. Postsynaptic spike firing elicited fast mitochondrial Ca2+ responses that were about threefold larger in the somas and apical dendrites than in basal dendrites and axons. The amplitude of these responses and metabolic activity were extremely sensitive to the firing frequency. Furthermore, while an EPSP alone caused no detectable Ca2+ elevation in the dendritic mitochondria, the coincidence of EPSP with a backpropagating spike produced prominent, highly localized mitochondrial Ca2+ hotspots. Our results indicate that mitochondria decode the spike firing frequency and the Hebbian temporal coincidences into the Ca2+ signals, which are further translated into the metabolic output and most probably lead to long-term changes in synaptic efficacy.
Data availability
A representative subset of the raw electrical recording and imaging data has been deposited to Dryad (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sxksn0348). The dataset contains the Microcal Origin opj files of the electrical and optical recordings and quantitative analysis of the data. We are unable to make all raw electrical recording and imaging data publicly available as due to the large size of our raw dataset (>10TB). Interested researchers should contact the corresponding author to gain access to the raw data.
-
Frequency- and spike-timing-dependent mitochondrial Ca2+ signaling regulates the metabolic rate and synaptic efficacy in cortical neuronsDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.sxksn0348.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Israel Science Foundation (1384/19)
- Ilya Fleidervish
Israel Science Foundation (1310/19)
- Daniel Gitler
National Institutes of Health (RF1 AG065628)
- Israel Sekler
National Institutes of Health (RF1 AG065628)
- Grace E Stutzmann
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Ben Gurion University of the Negev (protocol #IL-68-09-2019).
Copyright
© 2022, Stoler et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,810
- views
-
- 377
- downloads
-
- 20
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Synchronous neuronal activity is organized into neuronal oscillations with various frequency and time domains across different brain areas and brain states. For example, hippocampal theta, gamma, and sharp wave oscillations are critical for memory formation and communication between hippocampal subareas and the cortex. In this study, we investigated the neuronal activity of the dentate gyrus (DG) with optical imaging tools during sleep-wake cycles in mice. We found that the activity of major glutamatergic cell populations in the DG is organized into infraslow oscillations (0.01–0.03 Hz) during NREM sleep. Although the DG is considered a sparsely active network during wakefulness, we found that 50% of granule cells and about 25% of mossy cells exhibit increased activity during NREM sleep, compared to that during wakefulness. Further experiments revealed that the infraslow oscillation in the DG was correlated with rhythmic serotonin release during sleep, which oscillates at the same frequency but in an opposite phase. Genetic manipulation of 5-HT receptors revealed that this neuromodulatory regulation is mediated by Htr1a receptors and the knockdown of these receptors leads to memory impairment. Together, our results provide novel mechanistic insights into how the 5-HT system can influence hippocampal activity patterns during sleep.
-
- Neuroscience
The classical diagnosis of Parkinsonism is based on motor symptoms that are the consequence of nigrostriatal pathway dysfunction and reduced dopaminergic output. However, a decade prior to the emergence of motor issues, patients frequently experience non-motor symptoms, such as a reduced sense of smell (hyposmia). The cellular and molecular bases for these early defects remain enigmatic. To explore this, we developed a new collection of five fruit fly models of familial Parkinsonism and conducted single-cell RNA sequencing on young brains of these models. Interestingly, cholinergic projection neurons are the most vulnerable cells, and genes associated with presynaptic function are the most deregulated. Additional single nucleus sequencing of three specific brain regions of Parkinson’s disease patients confirms these findings. Indeed, the disturbances lead to early synaptic dysfunction, notably affecting cholinergic olfactory projection neurons crucial for olfactory function in flies. Correcting these defects specifically in olfactory cholinergic interneurons in flies or inducing cholinergic signaling in Parkinson mutant human induced dopaminergic neurons in vitro using nicotine, both rescue age-dependent dopaminergic neuron decline. Hence, our research uncovers that one of the earliest indicators of disease in five different models of familial Parkinsonism is synaptic dysfunction in higher-order cholinergic projection neurons and this contributes to the development of hyposmia. Furthermore, the shared pathways of synaptic failure in these cholinergic neurons ultimately contribute to dopaminergic dysfunction later in life.