No abstract

Muscle hypertrophy is the product of increased drive through protein synthetic pathways and the incorporation of newly divided satellite cells. Gains in muscle mass and strength can be achieved through exercise regimens that include resistance training. Increased insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) can also promote hypertrophy through increased protein synthesis and satellite cell proliferation. However, it is not known whether the combined effect of IGF-I and resistance training results in an additive hypertrophic response. Therefore, rats in which viral administration of IGF-I was directed to one limb were subjected to ladder climbing to test the interaction of each intervention on muscle mass and strength. After 8 wk of resistance training, a 23.3% increase in muscle mass and a 14.4% increase in peak tetanic tension (P(o)) were observed in the flexor hallucis longus (FHL). Viral expression of IGF-I without resistance training produced a 14.8% increase in mass and a 16.6% increase in P(o) in the FHL. The combined interventions produced a 31.8% increase in muscle mass and a 28.3% increase in P(o) in the FHL. Therefore, the combination of resistance training and overexpression of IGF-I induced greater hypertrophy than either treatment alone. The effect of increased IGF-I expression on the loss of muscle mass associated with detraining was also addressed. FHL muscles treated with IGF-I lost only 4.8% after detraining, whereas the untreated FHL lost 8.3% muscle mass. These results suggest that a combination of resistance training and overexpression of IGF-I could be an effective measure for attenuating the loss of training-induced adaptations.

At the immature calyx of Held, the fast decay phase of a Ca 2ϩ transient induced by tetanic stimulation (TS) was followed by a period of elevated [Ca 2ϩ ] i for tens of seconds, referred to as posttetanic residual calcium (Ca res ). We investigated the source of Ca res and its contribution to posttetanic potentiation (PTP). After TS (100 Hz for 4 s), posttetanic Ca res at the calyx of Held was largely abolished by tetraphenylphosphonium (TPP ϩ ) or Ru360, which inhibit mitochondrial Na ϩ -dependent Ca 2ϩ efflux and Ca 2ϩ uniporter, respectively. Whereas the control PTP lasted longer than Ca res , inhibition of Ca res by TPP ϩ resulted in preferential suppression of the early phase of PTP, the decay time course of which well matched with that of Ca res . TS induced significant increases in release probability (P r ) and the size of the readily releasable pool (RRP), which were estimated from plots of cumulative EPSC amplitudes. TPP ϩ or Ru360 suppressed the posttetanic increase in P r , whereas it had little effect on the increase in RRP size. Moreover, the posttetanic increase in P r , but not in RRP size, showed a linear correlation with the amount of Ca res . In contrast, myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) inhibitors and blebbistatin reduced the posttetanic increase in RRP size with no effect on the increase in P r . Application of TPP ϩ in the presence of MLCK inhibitor peptide caused further suppression of PTP. These findings suggest that Ca res released from mitochondria and activation of MLCK are primarily responsible for the increase in P r and that in the RRP size, respectively.

Glutamatergic synaptic terminals harbor reluctant synaptic vesicles (SVs) that contribute little to synchronous release during action potentials but are release competent when stimulated by sucrose or by direct intracellular application of calcium. It has been noted that the proximity of a release-competent SV to the calcium source is one of the primary factors that differentiate reluctant SVs from fastreleasing ones at the calyx of Held synapse. It has not been known whether reluctant SVs can be converted into fast-releasing ones. Here we show that reluctant SVs are recruited rapidly in an actindependent manner to become fast-releasing SVs once the pool of fast-releasing SVs is depleted by a short depolarization. Recovery of the pool of fast-releasing SVs was accompanied by a parallel reduction in the number of reluctant SVs. Quantitative analysis of the time course of depletion of fast-releasing SVs during high-frequency stimulation revealed that in the early phase of stimulation reluctant SVs are converted rapidly into fast-releasing ones, thereby counteracting short-term depression. During the late phase, however, after reluctant vesicles have been used up, another process of calmodulindependent recruitment of fast-releasing SVs is activated. These results document that reluctant SVs have a role in short-term plasticity and support the hypothesis of positional priming, which posits that reluctant vesicles are converted into fast-releasing ones via relocation closer to Ca 2+ -channels.readily releasable pool | synaptic vesicle dynamics S ynaptic strength is determined by quantal size, the number of release-competent synaptic vesicles (SVs), and their release probability (Pr). The estimate for the number of release-competent SVs, which also is referred to as the "readily releasable pool (RRP) size," depends heavily on the method used for its determination. The RRP size estimated by a cumulative plot of the excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSC) amplitudes evoked by high-frequency afferent fiber stimulation (RRP cum ) is smaller than that estimated by the application of a hypertonic sucrose solution or presynaptic strong depolarization (1-3). This discrepancy reflects the presence of reluctant SVs, which are scarcely released by an action potential (AP) at glutamatergic synaptic terminals. Consistently, deconvolution analysis of EPSCs evoked by a long depolarizing pulse at the calyx of Held revealed that release-competent SVs can be separated into fast-and slowreleasing SV pools (FRP and SRP, respectively) (4). The FRP vesicles are responsible for phasic release during a high-frequency train of action potentials (APs), whereas the SRP vesicles contribute primarily to asynchronous release, when the intracellular concentration of calcium ions ([Ca 2+ ]) is increased globally during the late period of the train (2). Thus, SRP vesicles can be regarded largely as reluctant SVs at the calyx of Held.Despite the evidence for the presence of reluctant SVs at glutamatergic synapses, their role in short-term plasticity i...