Proteins of the Vesicular Cycle as a Marker of Neuroplasticity of Dopaminergic Neurons in the Substantia Nigra of the Brain

Doklady Biochemistry and Biophysics. 2019. Vol. 489. No. 1. P. 399–402.

Pavlova E. N., Mingazov E. R., Surkov S. A., Ugrumov M.

Nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons (DNs), involved in the regulation of motor function, are characterized
by a high plasticity. Indeed, at the death of up to 50% of DNs in Parkinson’s disease, the survived
neurons provide normal regulation. This study was aimed to determine whether the vesicle cycle proteins,
syntaxin Ia (Syn Ia), synaptotagmin I (Syt I), Rab5a, and complexins I and II (Cmpx I and II) are involved
in the mechanisms of neuroplasticity in the substantia nigra, which mainly contains cell bodies and processes
of the DNs. In the neurotoxic models of Parkinson’s disease in mice, it was shown that, at the degeneration
of up to 50% of DNs, the content of Syt I, Syn Ia, and Cmpх I and II, involved in vesicle exocytosis, does not
change in the substantia nigra as a whole but is compensatorily increased in individual survived DNs. Thus,
the data obtained in this study suggest that the impairment of motor behavior, which occurs at the death of
half of the nigrostriatal DNs, is not caused by the impairment of the production of vesicle cycle proteins in
the survived DNs.

Keywords: brain, dopaminergic neurons, motor functions