The use-dependent increase in the size of RRPtrain is absent in double knockout animals (Figures 3I and 3J), suggesting that PKCα and PKCβ mediate the increase in the size

of the pool of vesicles following tetanic activation. This appears to be the primary mechanism by which calcium-dependent PKCs produce PTP, although they also appear to be partially responsible selleck chemicals llc for the increase in the fraction of vesicles exocytosed by an action potential. The substantial increase in RRPtrain is compatible with the observation that phorbol esters have only minor effects on the overall RRP size, provided the properties of different vesicle pools at the calyx of Held are considered (Lou et al., 2008). When an action potential invades a presynaptic bouton, selleck compound vesicles that are located near calcium channels are exposed to a larger calcium signal than more distant vesicles (Neher and Sakaba, 2008). Any increase in the sensitivity of a vesicle to calcium could increase both the size of the vesicle pool that can be exocytosed by a train of action potentials, and the fraction of the vesicles that are released by the first action potential (Lou et al., 2008). The relative contributions of these two mechanisms depend on the detailed ultrastructure of the synapse, the spatiotemporal calcium signal, and

the calcium sensitivity of the vesicles (Branco and Staras, 2009 and Neher and Sakaba, 2008). In the case of PTP, our findings suggest that PKCα/β act primarily to increase the size of the readily releasable pool. The involvement of calcium-dependent PKC isoforms in PTP raises the question: are PKCα and PKCβ the calcium sensors that, according to the residual calcium hypothesis

of PTP, detect presynaptic calcium signals evoked Adenosine by tetanic stimulation to phosphorylate downstream targets thus increasing the probability of release? We find that Cares decays (τ ∼ 22 s) more quickly than PTP (τ ∼ 45 s), suggesting that for our experimental conditions PTP is longer-lived than Cares at the calyx of Held, as is the case at hippocampal and cerebellar synapses (Beierlein et al., 2007 and Brager et al., 2003). Furthermore, we find that PTP is produced by tetanic stimulation that increases Cares by several hundred nanomolar. Can calcium-dependent PKCs respond to such small calcium increases? In the absence of lipid membranes, the Ca+2-binding affinities for PKCα and PKCβ are ∼40 μM (Kohout et al., 2002), which is much higher than the observed residual calcium signals. However, in the presence of phosphatidylserine and/or PIP2-containing membranes or in model systems, cooperative Ca+2 binding is observed for both isoforms, and calcium affinities range from 0.1 to 5 μM (Corbalan-Garcia et al., 1999, Corbin et al., 2007, Guerrero-Valero et al., 2007 and Kohout et al., 2002). It is also possible that factors in the intracellular milieu raise the binding affinity of PKCs for calcium, as is the case for calmodulin (Xia and Storm, 2005).