Although techniques to purify synaptic vesicles thus have the potential to yield significant insights into physiology and pathophysiology of nerve terminals, current methods rely on either esoteric materials or expression of transgenes. Moreover, nerve terminals appear to be particularly vulnerable to pathophysiologic processes underlying neurodegenerative diseases and schizophrenia.

Much remains unknown about the processes that enable the formation and function of SVs. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT SVs are small organelles that form and recycle at nerve terminals to enable synaptic transmission. Immunopurified SV preparations from mouse brain contained apolipoprotein E, the LDL receptor Lrp1, and enzymes involved in lipid metabolism, suggesting that SVs may play direct roles in lipid homeostasis and lipoprotein trafficking at the nerve terminal. These methods substantially widen the accessibility of SVs, enabling their purification in 60–90 min for downstream analyses including mass spectrometry and cryo-electron microscopy.

We report that the inexpensive rho1D4 monoclonal antibody binds SVs and show that elution with the 1D4 peptide yields native vesicles that are ≥ 10-fold purer than those obtained with classical techniques. Here, we describe techniques for the rapid isolation of SVs by immunoprecipitation with widely available antibodies conjugated to magnetic beads.

These technical obstacles have thus far limited the study of SVs in models of synaptic function and pathophysiology. Current methods to isolate synaptic vesicles (SVs), the organellar quanta of synaptic transmission, require highly specialized materials and up to 24 h.

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