Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ultrastructural anatomy of nodes of Ranvier in the peripheral nervous system as revealed by STED microscopy

2016; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 114; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1619553114

1091-6490

Elisa D’Este, Dirk Kamin, Francisco Balzarotti, Stefan W. Hell,

Nerve injury and regeneration

Significance In vertebrates, the action potential travels along myelin-coated electrically isolated axons and is regenerated at the nodes of Ranvier, which lack myelination and are characterized by a tight interaction between the axon and glial cells. Specific sets of proteins are enriched in each region of the nodes. Thanks to its subdiffraction resolution, stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy here uncovers the organization of 12 of these proteins at the nanoscale. The superresolved imaging reveals an extremely fine interplay and alignment of the axonal and glial cytoskeleton, with a defined ∼190-nm periodicity. Furthermore, the results point to the importance of the lateral organization of proteins at nodal gaps, an aspect that is yet unexplored.