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🧪 The final work from my PhD is finally out today! We found that synapses at the larval fruit fly neuromusculsr junction (NMJ) were individually highly diverse in their synaptic release properties. However... (1/5)

... Quite remarkably the NMJ was able to regulate vesicular release over 100s of synapses to ensure overall glutamate release was balanced across varying presynaptic firing frequencies! Moreover...(2/5)

... synapses were spatially situated in a random manner - their individual release strength did not predict their spatial location across the NMJ. What could allow for this robust balancing act between facilitation and depression? We found that... (3/5)

... Delivering an agonist for the only presynaptic metabotropic glutamate receptor, DmGluRA, abolished this balancing effect. Additionally, we CRISPR-tagged this receptor and found that it was mostly expressed in only one of two types of glutamatergic motor neurons present, the Ib MN. (4/5)

This was interesting to us because previous studies have documented the divergent properties of the Ib and Is motor neurons, including the lack of retrograde homeostatic signaling mechanisms at the Is. DmGluR expression is another way the Ib differentiates itself as a highly plastic input. (5/5)