Real-time measurement of exocytosis and endocytosis using interference of light.

We describe a new approach for making real-time measurements of exocytosis and endocytosis in neurons and neuroendocrine cells. The method utilizes interference reflection microscopy (IRM) to image surface membrane in close contact with a glass coverslip (the "footprint"). At the synaptic terminal of retinal bipolar cells, the footprint expands during exocytosis and retracts during endocytosis, paralleling changes in total surface area measured by capacitance. In chromaffin cells, IRM detects the fusion of individual granules as the appearance of bright spots within the footprint with spatial and temporal resolution similar to total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy. Advantages of IRM over capacitance are that it can monitor changes in surface area while cells are electrically active and it can be applied to mammalian neurons with relatively small synaptic terminals. IRM reveals that vesicles at the synapse of bipolar cells rapidly collapse into the surface membrane while secretory granules in chromaffin cells do not.