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Updated: Apr 28, 2026

Measuring Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis in Cultured Hippocampal Neurons
Published on: September 4, 2017
Composition of isolated synaptic boutons reveals the amounts of vesicle trafficking proteins
Benjamin G Wilhelm1, Sunit Mandad2, Sven Truckenbrodt3
1Department of Neuro- and Sensory Physiology, University of Göttingen Medical Center, European Neuroscience Institute, Cluster of Excellence Nanoscale Microscopy and Molecular Physiology of the Brain, Göttingen, Germany. International Max Planck Research School Neurosciences, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Abstract:
Synaptic vesicle recycling has long served as a model for the general mechanisms of cellular trafficking. We used an integrative approach, combining quantitative immunoblotting and mass spectrometry to determine protein numbers; electron microscopy to measure organelle numbers, sizes, and positions; and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to localize the proteins. Using these data, we generated a three-dimensional model of an "average" synapse, displaying 300,000 proteins in atomic detail. The copy numbers of proteins involved in the same step of synaptic vesicle recycling correlated closely. In contrast, copy numbers varied over more than three orders of magnitude between steps, from about 150 copies for the endosomal fusion proteins to more than 20,000 for the exocytotic ones.
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