We conclude that the ionotropic activity

of postsynaptic glutamate receptors, triggered by miniature events, is required for synapse growth. Because our results established that reduction of miniature neurotransmission inhibited synaptic development, we next investigated if increasing these events could also change synapse morphology. Complexin proteins bind to neuronal Selleckchem VX-770 SNARE complexes and regulate neurotransmitter release (Brose, 2008). Mutants of Drosophila complexin (cpx) have a dramatic increase in spontaneous synaptic vesicle release and have increased numbers of synaptic boutons ( Huntwork and Littleton, 2007). We hypothesized that these two phenotypes could be causally related through increased miniature NT. To test this idea, we first measured evoked and miniature NT in cpx null mutants. We found no change in the eEPSP integral ( Figures 4A, 4B, and 4H) in these mutants, although eEPSP amplitudes were reduced compared to controls ( Figure S5A), consistent Androgen Receptor Antagonist with previous studies (

Huntwork and Littleton, 2007 and Iyer et al., 2013). In contrast, cpx mutants had a dramatic 81-fold increase (p < 0.001) in miniature NT ( Figures 4A, 4B, and 4I). Expression of a complexin transgene (UAS-Cpx) in MNs rescued cpx mutants, restoring miniature NT to control levels ( Figures 4C and 4I). When we measured the terminal morphology of cpx mutants, we observed a 44% increase (p < 0.001) in terminal area ( Figures 4J, 4L, and 4M) accompanied by a 32% increase (p < 0.001) in typical bouton numbers but a 47% (p < 0.01) decrease in the number of small boutons ( Figures S5B and S5C). This lead to a 64% decrease (p < 0.001) of the bouton size index ( Figure 4K). As with neurotransmission, rescue of cpx mutants with transgenic complexin Adenylyl cyclase restored terminal area and the bouton size index ( Figures 4J, 4K, and 4N). Therefore, cpx mutants

have larger synaptic terminals with a decreased fraction of small boutons, the inverse of vglutMN and iGluRMUT mutant phenotypes. We next wished to determine if evoked NT contributed to cpx mutant terminal phenotypes. We first analyzed the cpx1257 mutant allele, which has normal eEPSP amplitudes and kinetics ( Iyer et al., 2013) ( Figure S5A) but has similarly increased miniature NT to cpx null alleles ( Figures 4B, 4D, and 4I). We found that cpx1257 mutants had increased terminal areas with a decreased bouton size index not significantly different from cpx null alleles ( Figures 4J, 4K, and 4O). This indicated that the aberrant terminal overgrowth of cpx mutants was not due to abnormal evoked release. As a second test, we expressed PLTXII in MNs of cpx null mutants. As expected, this strongly inhibited evoked NT without significantly altering miniature events ( Figures 4E, 4H, and 4I). When we measured the terminal morphology of these animals, we found no change compared to cpx mutants alone ( Figures 4J, 4K, and 4P).