Abstract
It has become well accepted that Huntington disease (HD) is associated with impaired glutamate uptake, resulting in a prolonged time-course of extracellular glutamate that contributes to excitotoxicity. However, the data supporting this view come largely from work in synaptosomes, which may overrepresent nerve-terminal uptake over astrocytic uptake. Here, we quantify real-time glutamate dynamics in HD mouse models by high-speed imaging of an intensity-based glutamate-sensing fluorescent reporter (iGluSnFR) and electrophysiological recordings of synaptically activated transporter currents in astrocytes. These techniques reveal a disconnect between the results obtained in synaptosomes and those in situ. Exogenous glutamate uptake is impaired in synaptosomes, whereas real-time measures of glutamate clearance in the HD striatum are normal or even accelerated, particularly in the aggressive R6/2 model. Our results highlight the importance of quantifying glutamate dynamics under endogenous release conditions, and suggest that the widely cited uptake impairment in HD does not contribute to pathogenesis.