Nerve function transmitter signals

What is the function of the membrane skeleton There is a group of hereditary diseases including spherocytosis in which erythrocytes do not maintain their biconcave disc shape but become spherical or have other abnormal shapes and are extremely fragile.269 272 Causes of spherocytosis include defective formation of spectrin tetramers and defective association of spectrin with ankyrin or the band 4.1 protein.265 273 Thus, the principal functions of these proteins in erythrocytes may be to strengthen the membrane and to preserve the characteristic shape of erythrocytes during their 120-day lifetime in the bloodstream. In other cells the spectrins are able to interact with microtubules, which are absent from erythrocytes, and to microtubule-associated proteins of the cytoskeleton (Chapter 7, Section F).270 In nerve terminals a protein similar to erythrocyte protein 4.1 may be involved in transmitter release.274 The cytoskeleton is also actively involved in transmembrane signaling. 

The cholinergic nervous system is a network of neurones spread through both the central and peripheral nervous systems which are characterised by synapses. Transmission of signals within the network is electrical except at the synapses where acetylcholine (ACh) is released to carry the impulses across a small gap to the next neurone or to an effector organ. It is ACh which gives the cholinergic nervous system its name. ACh is only one of the many chemical transmitters in the nervous system, whose function is to act as amplifying relay stations for the nerve impulses from the brain. 

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