Fast axonal transport in auditory neurons of the guinea pig: a rapidly turned-over glycoprotein.

Proteins of the fast component of axonal transport were analyzed by one- and two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the guinea pig spiral ganglion, which has its cell bodies in the cochlea and its axons in the eighth cranial nerve projecting to the ipsilateral cochlear nucleus. We found that we could easily identify the proteins of the fast component even though these axons are only about 3 mm long because the cochlea minimized diffusion of labeled precursor into the cochlear nucleus. The composition of the fast component of the spiral ganglion cells was similar, but not identical, to the fast component of guinea pig retinal ganglion cells. One difference was the predominance in the spiral ganglion cell fast component of a rapidly turned-over glycoprotein (RTGP) with a molecular weight of 110,000-140,000 and an isoelectric point of 5.0 RTGP accumulated in the cochlear nucleus for just the first 3 hr after the application of the labeled precursor and then rapidly disappeared, whereas the other major fast component polypeptides continued to accumulate for 12-24 hr. RTGP was also tentatively identified in the fast component of retinal ganglion cells, but was not as prominently labeled relative to the other fast-component proteins in those cells. The rapid disappearance of RTGP from spiral ganglion cell terminals in the cochlear nucleus may be a result of secretion, perhaps as part of a synaptic vesicle, or retrograde transport as a feedback signal. The difference in the relative amounts of RTGP found in spiral ganglion and retinal ganglion cell terminals may reflect differences in the fundamental properties of the two groups of neurons.