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Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Monitoring the Effect of Osmotic Stress on Secretory Vesicles and Exocytosis
Published on: February 19, 2018
Multicore vesicles: hyperosmolarity and L-DOPA induce homotypic fusion of dense core vesicles
Leslie A Sombers1, Marc M Maxson, Andrew G Ewing
1Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, 104 Chemistry Research Building, University Park, PA 16802-6300, USA.
Aim:
A fraction of vesicles in cells treated with hypertonic solution exhibit multiple dense cores and this is enhanced by treatment with L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA). These cells were examined to determine if the multicore vesicles are the product of endocytosis or homotypic fusion.
Methods:
Electron microscopy was used to determine the number of multicore vesicles and amperometry was used to examine if the multicore vesicles are a competent fraction of the readily releasable pool.
Results:
In this study, we observed that a substantial portion (15.3%) of large dense core vesicles in PC12 cells contained multiple cores in hypertonic saline loaded with L-DOPA, and amperometric measurements show a bimodal distribution of quantal sizes in treated cells.
Conclusions:
The results suggest that the multicored vesicles are formed from homotypic fusion of LCDVs prior to exocytosis.
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