Glutamate is established as the most important excitatory transmitter in the brain. The transmitter status of aspartate is debated. There is evidence that aspartate is released from nerve terminals by exocytosis. However, release through excitatory amino acid transporters (EAATs) could be an alternative mechanism. We further investigated this by use of light and quantitative electron microscopic immunocytochemistry. The nerve terminal localisation of aspartate was compared to that of glutamate using antibodies specifically recognising the amino acids. Rat hippocampal slices were incubated under normal (3 mM) and depolarising (55 mM) concentrations of K+ with and without the excitatory amino acid transporter inhibitor threo-beta-benzyloxyaspartate (TBOA). If aspartate is released either through reversal of the EAATs or through exchange with synaptically released glutamate, we would expect that TBOA would block the depolarisation induced release of aspartate. We found, however, that there was a substantial depletion of aspartate, as well as of glutamate, from hippocampal nerve terminals during K+ induced depolarisation in the presence of TBOA. The possibility that aspartate is released through exocytosis from synaptic vesicles was further investigated by the use of a D-aspartate uptake assay, including exposure of the slices to exogenous D-aspartate and the use of D-aspartate immunogold cytochemistry to localise D-aspartate in the fixed tissue. We found that D-aspartate taken up into the terminals was concentrated in synaptic vesicles as opposed to in the cytoplasmic matrix. This is in line with the presence in synaptic vesicles of the recently identified vesicular transporter for aspartate.
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