An electrode positioned close to the ventral nerve cord was used to stimulate evoked release by applying a 0.5 ms 85 μA square pulse with a stimulus current generator (WPI). Further analysis www.selleckchem.com/products/ABT-263.html was done with IGOR Pro (WaveMetrics). Illumination was provided with a Sutter Instrument Lambda LS with a filter wheel for shuttering. The excitation light was filtered with 480 nm excitation filter (N41012; Chroma) and

focused on the specimen with a 63× water immersion objective (Olympus). Light intensity measurement was done similarly to that described for cell culture recordings. Cultured cortical neurons (15 DIV) plated on a glass-bottom culture dish were imaged on a Zeiss Live 5 Confocal Microscope with a 20× air objective. The neurons were electroporated with the indicated plasmids prior to

plating. Prior to imaging, the cells were treated briefly with balanced saline solution containing 40 mM selleck KCl before placed in the same external solution used in cell culture recordings. Five to seven regions (318 μm × 318 μm) on each dish were tested per experiment. After acquiring the initial image of eGFP/Citrine fluorescence of each region, a quadrant of the field of view (159 μm × 159 μm) was scanned with 488 nm laser (25% of 100 mW) with pixel dwelling time of 154 μs for 90 frames, given each pixel the cumulative illumination time of 13.86 ms. The sample was then perfused for 2.5 min (∼3.5 ml) of 40 mM KCl containing-external solution containing 10 μM FM4-64FX (Life Technologies) before washout with standard external solution with no FM4-64 for 7.5 min (∼10 ml). The same regions were then re-imaged for FM4-64 fluorescence. The eGFP/citrine fluorescence was excited with 488 nm laser (5% intensity of 100 mW) and imaged with a 505 LP emission filter and pixel dwell time of 154 μs. The FM4-64 fluorescence was excited with 532 nm laser (10% of intensity of 75 mW) and imaged with a 650 LP emission filter (pixel dwell time of 131 μs). For both imaging

and CALI, 5 optical slices with 0.84 μm spacing were acquired in the z series. For the analysis of the results, the CALI regions were identified on the images and the FM4-64 fluorescence of the puncta inside and outside the CALI region were quantified separately. tuclazepam As not all eGFP or Citrine positive puncta are presynaptic boutons capable of vesicular release (Figure S1), only puncta positive for both eGFP/Citrine and FM4-64 were used for quantification to avoid false negative. However, this criterion also underestimates the inhibition of vesicular release with InSynC, as presynaptic boutons that were strongly inhibited and failed to take up FM4-64 were not quantified. The mean fluorescence value from a region with no fluorescent structures in the FM4-64 image was chosen to provide the background value to be substracted. The fluorescence values were measured on ImageJ.