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Most chemical neurotransmission occurs through Ca2+-dependent evoked or spontaneous vesicle exocytosis. In both cases, Ca2+ sensing is thought to occur shortly before exocytosis. In this paper, we provide evidence that the Ca2+ dependence of spontaneous vesicle release may partly result from an earlier requirement of Ca2+ for the assembly of soluble N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive fusion attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complexes. We show that the neuronal vacuolar-type H+-adenosine triphosphatase V0 subunit a1 (V100) can regulate the formation of SNARE complexes in a Ca2+–Calmodulin (CaM)-dependent manner. Ca2+–CaM regulation of V100 is not required for vesicle acidification. Specific disruption of the Ca2+-dependent regulation of V100 by CaM led to a >90% loss of spontaneous release but only had a mild effect on evoked release at Drosophila melanogaster embryo neuromuscular junctions. Our data suggest that Ca2+–CaM regulation of V100 may control SNARE complex assembly for a subset of synaptic vesicles that sustain spontaneous release.

A vesicular ATPase regulates both vesicle fusion and subsequent acidification of a subset of neuronal lysosomes and autophagosomes., The vesicular adenosine triphosphatase (v-ATPase) is a proton pump that acidifies intracellular compartments. In addition, mutations in components of the membrane-bound v-ATPase V0 sector cause acidification-independent defects in yeast, worm, fly, zebrafish, and mouse. In this study, we present a dual function for the neuron-specific V0 subunit a1 orthologue v100 in Drosophila melanogaster. A v100 mutant that selectively disrupts proton translocation rescues a previously characterized synaptic vesicle fusion defect and vesicle fusion with early endosomes. Correspondingly, V100 selectively interacts with syntaxins on the respective target membranes, and neither synaptic vesicles nor early endosomes require v100 for their acidification. In contrast, V100 is required for acidification once endosomes mature into degradative compartments. As a consequence of the complete loss of this neuronal degradation mechanism, photoreceptors undergo slow neurodegeneration, whereas selective rescue of the acidification-independent function accelerates cell death by increasing accumulations in degradation-incompetent compartments. We propose that V100 exerts a temporally integrated dual function that increases neuronal degradative capacity.