Coexpression of VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 in precerebellar neurons in the lateral reticular nucleus of the rat.

Coexpression of VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 in precerebellar neurons in the lateral reticular nucleus of the rat.
Brain Res Bull. 2020 Jun 17;:
Authors: Li ZH, Zhang CK, Qiao Y, Ge SN, Zhang T, Li JL
Abstract
Vesicular glutamate transporter (VGLUT) 1 and VGLUT2 have been reported to distribute complementally in most brain regions and have been assumed to define distinct functional elements. Previous studies have shown the expression of VGLUT1 mRNA and VGLUT2 mRNA in the lateral reticular nucleus (LRN), a key precerebellar nucleus sending mossy fibers to the cerebellum. In the present study, we firstly examined the coexpression of VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 mRNA in the LRN of the rat by dual-fluorescence in situ hybridization. About 81.89% of glutamatergic LRN neurons coexpressed VGLUT1 and VGLUT2 mRNA, and the others expressed either VGLUT1 or VGLUT2 mRNA. We then injected the retrograde tracer Fluogold (FG) into the vermal cortex of cerebellum, and observed that 95.01% and 86.80% of FG-labeled LRN neurons expressed VGLUT1- or VGLUT2 mRNA respectively. We further injected the anterograde tracer biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) into the LRN, and found about 82.6% of BDA labeled axon terminals in the granular layer of cerebellar cortex showed both VGLUT1- and VGLUT2-immunoreactivities. Afterwards, we observed under electron microscopy that anterogradely labeled axon terminals showing immunoreactivity for VGLUT1 or VGLUT2 made asymmetric synapses with den...

Source: Brain Research Bulletin - June 16, 2020 Category: Neurology Authors: Li ZH, Zhang CK, Qiao Y, Ge SN, Zhang T, Li JL Tags: Brain Res Bull Source Type: research