To sustain neurotransmission, synaptic vesicles and their associated proteins must be recycled locally at synapses. Synaptic vesicles are thought to be regenerated ~20 s after fusion by the assembly of clathrin scaffolds or in ~1 s by the reversal of fusion pores via ‘kiss-and-run’ endocytosis. Here we use optogenetics to stimulate cultured hippocampal neurons with a single stimulus, rapidly freeze them after fixed intervals and examine the ultrastructure using electron microscopy – ‘flash-and-freeze’ electron microscopy. Docked vesicles fuse and collapse into the membrane within 30 ms of the stimulus. Compensatory endocytosis occurs with 50-100 ms at sites flanking the active zone. Invagination is blocked by inhibition of actin polymerization, and scission is blocked by inhibiting dynamin. Because intact synaptic vesicles are not recovered, this form of recycling is not compatible with kiss-and-run endocytosis; moreover it is 200-fold faster than clathrin-mediated endocytosis. It is likely that ‘ultrafast endocytosis’ is specialized to rapidly restore the surface area of the membrane.

SummaryUltrafast endocytosis can retrieve a single large endocytic vesicle as fast as 50-100 ms after synaptic vesicle fusion. However, the fate of the large endocytic vesicles is not known. Here we demonstrate that these vesicles transition to a synaptic endosome about one second after stimulation. The endosome is resolved into coated vesicles after 3 seconds, which in turn become small-diameter synaptic vesicles 5-6 seconds after stimulation. We disrupted clathrin function using RNAi and found that clathrin is not required for ultrafast endocytosis but is required to generate synaptic vesicles from the endosome. Ultrafast endocytosis fails when actin polymerization is disrupted, or when neurons are stimulated at room temperature instead of physiological temperature. In the absence of ultrafast endocytosis, synaptic vesicles are retrieved directly from the plasma membrane by clathrin-mediated endocytosis. These results explain in large part discrepancies among published experiments concerning the role of clathrin in synaptic vesicle endocytosis.

A complete portrait of a cell requires a detailed description of its molecular topography: proteins must be linked to particular organelles. Immuno-electron microscopy can reveal locations of proteins with nanometer resolution but is limited by the quality of fixation, the paucity of antibodies, and the inaccessibility of the antigens. Here, we describe correlative fluorescence electron microscopy for the nanoscopic localization of proteins in electron micrographs. Proteins tagged with Citrine or tdEos were expressed in Caenorhabditis elegans, fixed and embedded. Tagged proteins were imaged from ultrathin sections using stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) or photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM). Fluorescence was correlated with organelles imaged in electron micrographs from the same sections. These methods were used to successfully localize histones, a mitochondrial protein, and a presynaptic dense projection protein in electron micrographs.