, 1999). However, the latter identification may be erroneous since subsequent studies showed that RIM-BPs are highly expressed only in brain and not peripherally and tightly bind to RIM ( Wang et al., 2000) and to N-, P/Q-, and L-type Ca2+ channels ( Hibino et al., 2002 and Kaeser et al., 2011). The finding that RIM-BPs biochemically form a complex with RIMs in the active zone (Wang et al., 2000), and the discovery that RIM-BPs bind to Ca2+ channels (Hibino et al., 2002) suggested that they may act to recruit Ca2+ channels to active zones. However, the initial problem with this hypothesis was that RIM-BPs bind nonsynaptic L-type Ca2+ channels

as well as synaptic N- and P/Q-type Ca2+ channels and thus could not account for the specific recruitment of N- and P/Q-type Ca2+ channels to active zones (Hibino et al., 2002). DAPT order This problem was resolved when the RIM PDZ-domains were found to bind to

N- and P/Q-type but not L-type Ca2+ channels (Kaeser et al., 2011), indicating that Ca2+ channels are recruited to active selleck chemicals llc zones by binding simultaneously to both RIM and RIM-BPs (Figure 3). This hypothesis was not only confirmed in rescue experiments with mutant RIM proteins showing that both interactions are essential for recruiting Ca2+ channels to active zones (Kaeser et al., 2011), but also in Drosophila experiments in which mutations in RIM-BP were found to disrupt Ca2+ channel localization ( Liu et al., 2011). The Drosophila experiments additionally revealed that in the absence of RIM-BP, the organization of the active zone was impaired, and the ultrastructural distribution of the ELKS homolog Bruchpilot at active zones was altered, suggesting that RIM-BPs may have additional functions besides assisting RIM in the recruitment of Ca2+ channels. Indeed, the fact that the loss of presynaptic Ca2+ channels in RIM-deficient synapses can be most rescued with a RIM fragment consisting only of its PDZ-domain and RIM-BP binding sequence ( Kaeser et al., 2011) can only be explained by the assumption that RIM-BP

engages in other interactions besides binding to RIMs and Ca2+ channels. Identifying these additional interactions of RIM-BPs will be both challenging and exciting. The C. elegans unc-13 gene was identified as a gene encoding a diacylglycerol-binding protein whose mutation caused an “uncoordinated” phenotype, but nothing was known about the localization or function of this protein ( Maruyama and Brenner, 1991). Characterization of the mammalian homologs of UNC-13—named Munc13s—revealed that Munc13 proteins are active zone proteins essential for synaptic vesicle priming ( Brose et al., 1995 and Augustin et al., 1999). Mammals contain five Munc13 genes (Brose et al., 1995, Song et al., 1998 and Koch et al., 2000). The Munc13-1, -2, and -3 genes encode larger proteins primarily expressed in brain, while the Munc13-4 and BAP3 genes encode smaller proteins primarily expressed outside of brain.