CAPS-1 and CAPS-2 are essential synaptic vesicle priming proteins

SummaryBefore transmitter-filled synaptic vesicles can fuse with the plasma membrane upon stimulation they have to be primed to fusion competence. The regulation of this priming process controls the strength and plasticity of synaptic transmission between neurons, which in turn determines many complex brain functions. We show that CAPS-1 and CAPS-2 are essential components of the synaptic vesicle priming machinery. CAPS-deficient neurons contain no or very few fusion competent synaptic vesicles, which causes a selective impairment of fast phasic transmitter release. Increases in the intracellular Ca2+ levels can transiently revert this defect. Our findings demonstrate that CAPS proteins generate and maintain a highly fusion competent synaptic vesicle pool that supports phasic Ca2+ triggered release of transmitters

From Prototyping to Allotyping. The invention of change of use and the crisis of building types

The chapter analyses the invention and the form of the discourse on building conversion as one particular instance of redefining what a technology is and how it operates. I describe a shift from expert defined closure to lay based openness and tinkering as a shift from prototyping to allotyping: Since the early 1970s, change of use and building conversion have become a central and fashionable discourse among architects and architectural theorists. Before the 1970s, buildings were understood as technologies, as ‘society made durable’. The notion of building type was central to link a building to a given use. A bank was a bank because architects applied existing templates, prototypes, to turn a building into a bank. In the 1970s, suddenly buildings became flexible – discursively, since building conversion always existed: ‘Building type’ no longer was a meaningful link between a building and its use. A bank should not stay a bank, but become a hotel, a theatre or a flat, in short: an allotype. The chapter elucidate this central shift in thinking about buildings and reflects on the special case of allotyping buildings and how it continues to vex thinking about buildings