Neurologists Discover Mechanism That Helps Brain Cells Communicate

In a new paper published July 5 in the journal Science, Yale researchers describe how this compact but highly mobile structure is achieved. They found that synaptic vesicles organize themselves into a liquid compartment within interior of the cell, much as oil does when mixed with water. The new research shows groups of synaptic vesicles can “demix” in the presence of a common nerve terminal protein synapsin, explaining how vesicles can both remain tightly clustered yet rapidly fuse with membrane of neurons when activated, said Yale’s Dragomir Milovanovic, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Pietro De Camilli. Reference: “A liquid phase of synapsin and lipid vesicles” by Dragomir Milovanovic, Yumei Wu, Xin Bian and Pietro De Camilli, 5 July 2018, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.aat5671