• Dengyun Ge, Peter G Noakes, and Nickolas A Lavidis.
• Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, PR China; School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. Electronic address: dengyun.ge@uqconnect.edu.au.
• Neuroscience. 2020 Jan 15; 425: 157-168.

AbstractIt has long been known that each neuron in both the central and peripheral nervous system has a large number of active zones. Nonetheless, how active zones are regulated to maintain a homeostatic release state and response to the constantly changing environment remains poorly understood. Due to its relatively simple structure and easy accessibility, the neuromuscular synapse (NM-synapse) continues to be used as a model synapse to examine the basic nature of synaptic neurotransmission. In the NM-synapse, quantal neurotransmitter release can occur spontaneously or triggered by invading nerve impulses. Past research has indicated that some active zones tend to be involved more with spontaneous quantal release than evoked quantal release. Furthermore, evoked quantal release has been shown to be highly non-uniform between active zones along nerve terminal branches. How these large numbers of active zones along the same nerve terminal are functionally correlated remains unclear. This review starts with the basic features of quantal neurotransmitter release, then progresses to the current knowledge on how the active zones interact with each other along the same nerve terminal.Copyright © 2019 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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