Distribution of neurone-specific clathrin light chain b between clathrin-coated vesicle subclasses.

The clathrin light chains (LCs) may serve to introduce diversity into the structure and/or function of clathrin-coated vesicles (CVs). To understand such involvement of LCs, it is advantageous to study the distribution of various LC subclasses among CV populations with specified structure and/or function. We have previously separated three populations of CV from rat brain, the small- and medium-sized populations originated from neurones and large-sized one from glial cells. In the present study, we examined whether the neurone-specific LCb is localized in either or both of those neuronal CV populations by immunogold electron microscopy, and showed the distribution of the LCb between both CVs. These findings suggest that the neurone-specific LC subclass does not specify morphologically distinct subtype of neuronal CVs but plays a role in constructing the CVs generally smaller than those from other tissues and/or in neurone-specific mechanisms associated with both of the neuronal CVs.