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Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Measuring Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis in Cultured Hippocampal Neurons
Published on: September 4, 2017
STED Imaging of Vesicular Endocytosis in the Synapse
Shaoqin Hu1, Zhenli Xie1, Bianbian Wang1
1Neuroscience Research Center, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Department of Neurology, the First Affiliated Hospital, Core Facilities Sharing Platform, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
Abstract:
Endocytosis is a fundamental biological process that couples exocytosis to maintain the homeostasis of the plasma membrane and sustained neurotransmission. Super-resolution microscopy enables optical imaging of exocytosis and endocytosis in live cells and makes an essential contribution to understanding molecular mechanisms of endocytosis in neuronal somata and other types of cells. However, visualization of exo-endocytic events at the single vesicular level in a synapse with optical imaging remains a great challenge to reveal mechanisms governing the synaptic exo-endocytotic coupling. In this protocol, we describe the technical details of stimulated emission depletion (STED) imaging of synaptic endocytosis at the single-vesicle level, from sample preparation and microscopy calibration to data acquisition and analysis.
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