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Issue Cover (February 2018)
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of neurochemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.75
H-Index - 229
eISSN - 1471-4159
pISSN - 0022-3042
DOI - 10.1111/jnc.14165
Subject(s) - neuropeptide , wortmannin , neuropeptide y receptor , vesicle , ethanol , motility , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , medicine , neuroscience , biology , endocrinology , biochemistry , membrane , signal transduction , receptor , pi3k/akt/mtor pathway
Front cover:Background: Alcohol abuse disorders are associated with adverse neurological symptoms and neurotoxicity. However, despite being one of the most commonly abused substances, the physiological effects of ethanol are not well defined. Main finding: By combining Drosophila, an ideal system for modelling ethanol disorders given their strong homology with mammals and natural response to ethanol, with high spatiotemporal resolution live‐imaging of vesicle motility, we found that acute, low doses of ethanol result in increased flux of fluorescently‐labeled neuropeptide vesicles toward neuromuscular junctions. Pharmacological treatments to increase (wortmannin) or decrease (LiCl) active GSK‐3 levels revealed that GSK‐3 is critical in mediating this stimulatory effect of ethanol. Implications: These results yield novel insight into the neurophysiological effects of ethanol and provide a possible link between behavioral responses to ethanol and neuropeptide transport. Image content: Time (y axis, 30 seconds) versus distance (x axis, 90 μm) graph of real‐time movement of GFP‐tagged neuropeptide vesicles in living Drosophila larvae. The reduced vesicle motility by wortmannin feeding is partially rescued by acute treatment with low dose ethanol.Read the full article ‘Ethanol stimulates the in vivo axonal movement of neuropeptide dense‐core vesicles in Drosophila motor neurons’ by G. J. Iacobucci and S. Gunawardena ( J. Neurochem . 2018, vol. 144(4), pp. 466–482) on doi: 10.1111/jnc.14230