Victor P. Whittaker: The discovery of the synaptosome and its implications

Abstract

The isolation of synaptosomes and synaptic vesicles from mammalian brain was a major breakthrough in the study of the cellular and molecular function of the nervous system. It laid the foundations for the present-day molecular biological analysis of all other functional compartments of the synapse. Synaptosomes are still much in use for the study of synaptic transmission. This work was performed at the beginning of the 1960s by Victor P. Whittaker and coworkers at the Agricultural Research Council Institute of Animal Physiology in Babraham, near Cambridge, UK. This chapter describes the history of the discovery of the synaptosome and of synaptic vesicles and its implications and highlights the very personal engagement of Victor Whittaker in this field.