ON THE GEOMETRY, KINETICS AND PLASTICITY OF SYMPATHETIC NEUROMUSCULAR-TRANSMISSION

The purpose of this minireview is to discuss, briefly and subjectively, what we know about where, when and how nerve impulses release sympathetic transmitters and how they control the tension of smooth muscle in some of the simplest available model systems, especially the rat tail artery. In this tissue, most of the control seems to be exerted by noradrenaline (NA) and ATP released from the 'synaptic vesicle' of these nerves, the 'small dense cored' vesicle (SDV; Fig. 1a). We have therefore largely ignored the roles played by release of NA, ATP and neuropeptides from 'large dense cored' vesicles (LDVs). For a more complete discussion of the subject as a whole, the reader is referred to more extensive review articles (4,16,26,27). We use in this paper mainly the Figures and legends, but as well selected key references, to present our views of the 'state of the art' in this field.