Heterogeneous distribution of neurocalcin-immunoreactive nerve terminals in the mouse adrenal medulla

Abstract

Neurocalcin is a novel calcium-binding protein found in bovine brain tissue. We investigated immunoreactivity for neurocalcin in the mouse adrenal medulla using light and electron microscopy. The immunoreactivity was present in nerve fibers, nerve terminals, and ganglion cells in the adrenal medulla, but chromaffin cells, sustentacular cells, and Schwann cells were negative in reaction. Nerve bundles containing neurocalcin-immunoreactive fibers passed through the adrenal cortex and extended into the medulla. Immunopositive nerve fibers branched off and projected varicose terminals around the chromaffin cells. These varicose terminals contained small and large-cored vesicles and made synapses with the chromaffin cells. We performed paraformaldehyde-induced fluorescence-histochemical studies for catecholamine combined with immunohistochemical studies for neurocalcin. Neurocalcin-immunoreactive nerve terminals were more abundant at noradrenaline (fluorescent) cell-rich regions than at adrenaline (non-fluorescent) cell-rich regions. These results show that neurocalcin-immunoreactive nerves mainly innervate noradrenaline-containing chromaffin cells in the mouse adrenal medulla and that neurocalcin may regulate synaptic function in the nerve terminals.

Neurocalcin-like immunoreactivity in the rat esophageal nervous system

“…This CaBP was contained by many neurons but not glial cells in the muscular tissues of esophagus as observed in other tissues using the electron microscope (Iino et al 1995a,b;Iino et al 1997). In comparison with other immunohistochemical studies for calbindin (Kuramoto and Kuwano 1994) or neuropeptides (Rodrigo et al 1985;Neuhuber et al 1994;Uddman et al 1995), neurocalcin immunoreactivity showed many nerve terminals innervating both neurons and muscles.…”

“…Molecular cloning studies show neurocalcin comprises at least two isoforms named neurocalcin a ) and neurocalcin d (Okazaki et al 1992). By immunoblot and immunohistochemical analysis, neurocalcin is widely detected in the neurons of the central and peripheral nervous system Bastianelli et al 1993;Okazaki et al 1994;Iino et al 1995a,b;Junttila et al 1995;Iino et al 1997Iino et al , 1998. From comparing previous reports using antibodies to calbindin, parvalbumin and calretinin, our studies reveal that neurocalcin immunoreactivity is distributed widely and contained richly in some peripheral nervous systems .…”

Neuronal Ca2+ Sensor 1, the Mammalian Homologue of Frequenin, Is Expressed in Chromaffin and PC12 Cells and Regulates Neurosecretion from Dense-core Granules

“…These data suggested that NCS-1 but not neurocalcin or hippocalcin is expressed by chromaffin cell cultures. The absence of neurocalcin from mouse chromaffin cells despite its presence in adrenal nerve terminals has been reported (26).…”

Intracellular neuronal calcium sensor proteins: a family of EF-hand calcium-binding proteins in search of a function

“…Several observa- Nef 1996) Rat brain: hippocampus: pyramidal cells in CA1; cerebellum: Purkinje cells, basket cell terminals on Purkinje cells (Schaad et al 1996) Rat, bovine and chick retina: ganglion cells, bipolar cells (De Raad et al 1995) Mouse brain: widely distributed in peripheral and central nervous system, highest in hippocampus CA1-CA3, dentate gyrus; ventral horn spinal cord, dorsal root ganglia; high in cortex; low in putamen; cerebellar cortex; astroglial cells in hippocampus and spinal cord (Olafsson et al 1997) r-flup Transcripts widely distributed in the rat brain: cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, thalamic nuclei (Lindemeier et al 1996) (Boekhoff et al 1997; Fig. 2) Rat, bovine and chick retina: amacrine, bipolar and ganglion cells (De Raad et al 1995) Gerbil hippocampus: pyramidal cells in CA1, CA3, hilus neurons, granule cells of dentate gyrus (Lenz et al 1996b) At the ultrastructural level, VILIP-1 is found both presynaptically, e.g., in parallel and climbing fiber terminals in the cerebellum (Lenz et al 1996a), and postsynaptically, e.g., at hippocampal shaft and spine synapses (Lenz et al 1996b) VILIP-2/NVP-2 Rat brain: all regions except cerebellum and pons (Kajimoto et al 1993 , 1994a) (Grant et al 1995 in situ hybridization and lacZ expression under the control of hippocalcin promoter) Rat retina: ganglion cells (Bastianelli et al 1995b) Mouse brain: hippocampus: pyramidal cells; cerebellum: Purkinje cells; cortex: pyramidal neurons layer II-VI (Sugisaki et al 1994) neurocalcins (α, β, γ1, γ2, δ) Note, antibodies against "neurocalcin" may cross-react with a number of different NCS proteins (see Martinez-Guijarro et al 1998;Kato et al 1998) Bovine cerebrum, cerebellum, brainstem, spinal cord, retina (Nakano et al 1992 b ) Bovine retina: amacrine and ganglion cells Bovine adrenal gland (Nakano et al 1993) Bovine cerebellum: granule cells and molecular layer, weakly in Purkinje cells; cortex: pyramidal cells (Hidaka and Okazaki 1993) Bovine inner ear (Iino et al 1995) Bovine cranial motoneurons (Junttila et al 1995) Mouse adrenal gland (Iino et al 1997) Rat hippocampus: GABAergic interneurons (Martinez-Guijarro et al 1998) Rat retina: amacrine and ganglion cells (Bastianelli et al 1995b) Rat olfactory bulb …”