The Spatial Scale of Synaptic Protein Allocation During Homeostatic Plasticity

Abstract

An individual neuron hosts up to 10,000 individual synapses that can be made stronger or weaker by local and cell-wide plasticity mechanisms, both of which require protein synthesis. To address over what spatial scale a neuron allocates synaptic resources, we quantified the distribution of newly synthesized proteins after global homeostatic upscaling using metabolic labeling and single-molecule localization (DNA-PAINT). Following upscaling, we observed a global increase in locally synthesized nascent protein in synapses and at dendrites, with a high degree of variability between individual synapses. We determined the smallest spatial scale over which nascent proteins were evenly distributed and found that it is best described by synaptic neighborhoods (~ 10 microns in length)- smaller than a dendritic branch and larger than an individual synapse. Protein allocation at the level of neighborhoods thus represents a solution to the problem of protein allocation within a neuron that balances local autonomy and global homeostasis.