Modelling vasopressin synthesis and storage dynamics during prolonged osmotic challenge and recovery based on activity dependent upregulation of mRNA transcription

Hypothalamic vasopressin neurons are neuroendocrine cells which form part of the homeostatic systems that regulate plasma volume and extracellular fluid osmolarity. In response to synaptic inputs encoding osmolarity and changes in plasma volume, they generate complex and dynamically heterogeneous patterns of spikes that in turn trigger secretion of peptide hormone vasopressin from axonal terminals in the posterior pituitary. The thousands of neurons’ secretory signals generate a summed plasma vasopressin signal acting at the kidneys to regulate water loss. Vasopressin is synthesised in the neuronal cell bodies, packaged into vesicles, and transported to large stores at the pituitary terminals. Supported by activity-dependent upregulation of synthesis and transport, these stores can maintain a secretion response for several days of elevated osmolarity, experimentally tested by dehydration or salt loading. However, despite upregulated synthesis, stores gradually decline during sustained challenge, followed by a slow recovery. With no evidence of a store encoding feedback signal, previous simple modelling explained these synthesis dynamics based on activity-dependent upregulation of transcription and mRNA content. Here we integrate this idea into a detailed neuronal model, coupling spiking, secretion, and synthesis to simulate a complete neural system, from physiological input to output, and ask how a distributed neuroendocrine system can maintain hormone supply-demand balance over prolonged challenge without direct feedback from distant hormone stores. The model suggests that mRNA acts as a long-timescale memory of neuronal activity, extending temporal integration beyond spike activity and intracellular Ca 2+ to coordinate synthesis with sustained demand.