Look Who's Talking

Texts, calls and face-to-face chats, communication comes in many forms. In nerve cells, communication occurs via electrical signals at connections called synapses and at much smaller connections called gap junctions. Imaging gap junctions amid nerve cell networks is challenging due to their size. Researchers take on this challenge using scanning electron microscopy and confocal microscopy of gap junction protein Cx36 in cones and rods, special nerve cells in mouse retina. 3D reconstructions (pictured) revealed projections from cones (green) contacting rods (other colours) where Cx36 was present, suggesting gap junction communication. Almost all gap junctions were cone-rod contacts, not cone-cone or rod-rod. Calculating the number of these contacts, they estimated how much electrical activity could pass between these cells if all gap junctions were open — it was similar to past experiments where this was actually measured. This sheds light on who's talking to who in the chatter of gap junction communication.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Video by Munenori Ishibashi and colleagues
• Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, University of Texas at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, April 2022