Neurotransmitter Coupling Through Gap Junctions in the Retina
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The Journal of Neuroscience, December 15, 1998, 18(24):10594–10602 Neurotransmitter Coupling through Gap Junctions in the Retina David I. Vaney, J. Charles Nelson, and David V. Pow Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia Although all bipolar cells in the retina probably use the excita- glycine-uptake inhibitor, carbenoxolone blocks the subsequent tory transmitter glutamate, approximately half of the cone bi- glycine replenishment of the bipolar cells but not the amacrine polar cells also contain elevated levels of the inhibitory trans- cells. Third, intracellular injection of rod amacrine cells with the mitter glycine. Some types of cone bipolar cells make gap-junction permeant tracer Neurobiotin secondarily labels a heterologous gap junctions with rod amacrine cells, which heterogenous population of cone bipolar cells, all of which contain elevated levels of glycine, leading to the hypothesis that show glycine immunoreactivity. Taken together, these findings the bipolar cells obtain their glycine from amacrine cells. Ex- indicate that the elevated glycine in cone bipolar cells is not perimental support for this hypothesis is now provided by three derived by high-affinity uptake or de novo synthesis but is independent lines of evidence. First, the glycine transporter obtained by neurotransmitter coupling through gap junctions GLYT1 is expressed by the glycine-containing amacrine cells with glycinergic amacrine cells. Thus transmitter content may but not by the glycine-containing bipolar cells, suggesting that be an unreliable indicator of transmitter function for neurons only the amacrine cells are functionally glycinergic. Second, the that make heterologous gap junctions. gap-junction blocker carbenoxolone greatly reduces exoge- nous 3H-glycine accumulation into the bipolar cells but not the Key words: gap junction; neurotransmitter coupling; glycine; amacrine cells. Moreover, when the endogenous glycine stores glycine transporter; GLYT1; retina; amacrine cell; bipolar cell; in both cell classes are depleted by incubating the retina with a tracer coupling; Neurobiotin; carbenoxolone; sarcosine Gap junctions between neurons serve two distinct functions (for into depolarizing cone bipolar cells, which then convey the rod review, see Spray, 1996). First, gap junctions are readily perme- signal to the retinal ganglion cells (for review, see Vaney, 1997). able to small ions and thus function as electrical synapses, allow- The AII amacrine cells appear to be functionally glycinergic in ing current carried largely by potassium ions to pass directly that (1) they contain elevated levels of glycine but negligible between neurons. Second, gap junctions are also permeable to amounts of g-aminobutyric acid (Pourcho and Goebel, 1987b; metabolites with molecular weights below ;1000 Da. Such met- Wright et al., 1997), (2) their chemical transmission is blocked by abolic coupling is dependent on molecules diffusing down a the glycinergic antagonist strychnine (Mu¨ller et al., 1988), and (3) concentration gradient, whereas electrical coupling is dependent their output synapses are immunoreactive for the a1 subunit of on ions moving down a potential gradient. It has been shown that the glycine receptor (Sassoe`-Pognetto et al., 1994). Although it gap junctions in various systems are permeable to amino acids appears that all bipolar cells in the retina use the excitatory (Rieske et al., 1975; Finbow and Pitts, 1981; Brissette et al., 1994) transmitter glutamate (for review, see Massey, 1990), approxi- and to many second-messenger molecules, including cyclic nucle- mately half of the cone bipolar cells also contain and accumulate otides, inositol triphosphate, and calcium ions (Tsien and Wein- elevated levels of the inhibitory transmitter glycine (for review, gart, 1976; Brehm et al., 1989; Sa´ez et al., 1989; Kandler and Katz, see Pourcho and Goebel, 1990). It has been proposed that the 1998). The amino acid transmitters glycine (75 Da), glycine in the AII amacrine cells diffuses through the heterolo- g-aminobutyric acid (103 Da), and glutamate (147 Da) should gous gap junctions into the cone bipolar cells (Marc, 1984, 1989; pass readily through neuronal gap junctions, but there is no Cohen and Sterling, 1986; for review, see Vaney, 1994). experimental evidence that neurotransmitter coupling occurs nat- We have tested this hypothesis from three independent per- urally in the nervous system. spectives. First, we examined whether the glycine-containing bi- In the mammalian retina, the extensive gap junctions between polar cells express the high-affinity glycine transporter GLYT1. the rod (AII) amacrine cells and cone bipolar cells (Kolb and Second, we determined whether gap-junction blockers affect the Famiglietti, 1974) potentially provide a pathway for neurotrans- accumulation of glycine by the bipolar cells, both exogenously and mitter coupling. Stimulation of the rod photoreceptors leads to after depletion of the endogenous glycine stores. Third, we ver- depolarization of the AII amacrine cells, and this response is ified directly that the bipolar cells coupled to the AII amacrine transmitted electrically through the heterologous gap junctions cells contain elevated levels of glycine. Received Aug. 26, 1998; revised Sept. 25, 1998; accepted Sept. 30, 1998. MATERIALS AND METHODS This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia). All experiments were approved by the University of Queensland animal Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. D. I. Vaney, Vision, Touch and experimentation ethics committee and were conducted in accord with the Hearing Research Centre, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, The Uni- Australian code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific versity of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia. purposes. Adult pigmented rabbits and Dark Agouti rats were obtained Copyright © 1998 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/98/1810594-09$05.00/0 from the University of Queensland Central Animal House. Biochemical Vaney et al. • Neurotransmitter Coupling through Gap Junctions J. Neurosci., December 15, 1998, 18(24):10594–10602 10595 reagents were obtained from Sigma (St. Louis, MO) unless indicated cells showing the capacity to synthesize glycine (Pow, 1998). otherwise. Under these circumstances, the cellular localization of a high- Immunocytochemistry. The GLYT1 antigen was a synthetic peptide (Auspep, Melbourne, Australia) corresponding to the final 15 amino affinity glycine transporter assumes special importance in identi- acids in the C terminus, which is common to both splice variants fying glycinergic neurons. For most neurons, the presence of a (GLYT1a and GLYT1b) (Liu et al., 1993). The peptide (2 mg) was glycine transporter can be inferred from the high-affinity uptake coupled to porcine thyroglobulin (20 mg) using formaldehyde, and a of radiolabeled glycine. However, this does not hold for the guinea pig was immunized by our standard techniques (Pow and Crook, glycine-accumulating cone bipolar cells, which could obtain the 1993). Specificity was initially assessed by Western blotting using homog- enates of retina and spinal cord. This revealed a single immunoreactive exogenous glycine indirectly via the glycine-accumulating AII band with a molecular weight of ;68 kDa, corresponding to the pre- amacrine cells (or vice versa). dicted molecular weight of GLYT1 (Zafra et al., 1995). Dot blots using In the rabbit retina, the immunocytochemical localization of the synthetic peptide coupled to bovine serum albumin demonstrated the high-affinity glycine transporter GLYT1 resulted in specific that the antiserum recognized formaldehyde conjugates of the peptide, ; and that this labeling was abolished after preabsorption of the antiserum labeling of the plasma membranes of 60% of the neurons with the peptide conjugate used for immunization. The rat antiserum located at the inner margin of the inner nuclear layer (the ama- against a formaldehyde conjugate of glycine has been characterized crine sublayer). The GLYT1-immunoreactive cells branched only previously (Pow et al., 1995). Formaldehyde-fixed retinal whole mounts in the inner plexiform layer, confirming that they were amacrine and vibratome sections were double-labeled for GLYT1- and glycine- cells, in agreement with an earlier study on the rat retina (Zafra immunofluorescence, as described elsewhere (Pow et al., 1995; Wright et al., 1997). Images of the preparations were acquired with a Bio-Rad et al., 1995). Whole mounts and transverse sections were double- MRC 600 confocal microscope, analyzed using NIH Image 1.62, and labeled for GLYT1- and glycine-immunofluorescence, which prepared for publication using Adobe Photoshop 4. In most cases, digital were visualized sequentially under a high-power objective using processing was confined to adjusting the origin and slope of the linear fluorescence filter sets that were selective for FITC or Texas Red. input–output curve, thus manipulating the brightness and contrast of the image. In Figure 5, the variations command of Photoshop was used to This revealed that most of the glycine-containing cells in the add red (or green) to the midtones and shadows, and to add cyan (or amacrine sublayer expressed GLYT1, although the levels of im- magenta) to the highlights. munofluorescence varied widely (Fig. 1A–D). Consequently, the Tracer-coupling experiments. The detailed procedures have been de- GLYT1-immunofluorescence