Although synapses have the machinery to make proteins, there had not been evidence that this machinery can function to change synapses.
Huber and colleagues worked with tissue from the hippocampus region of the brain, separating synapses from their cell bodies. Even after the cells and synapses were cut apart, the synapses continued to be modified by local protein activity, indicating that synaptically synthesized proteins are involved.
This led the researchers to introduce specific inhibitors of the protein synthetic machinery directly to the synapses. The synaptic depression was blocked, providing further evidence that the proteins are made at the synapse. Follow-up experiments, in which the activation of genes at the cell body was blocked, reinforced that the new proteins are synthesized directly at the synapses.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a grant from the National Eye Institute funded the study. The other researcher involved was Matthew Kayser, a graduating senior who conducted the work as part of his honors thesis.
At Brown, the researchers are based in the Department of Neuroscience in the School of Medicine. They are currently studying what types of proteins are being made at the synapses and how experience rapidly regulates synapses through local protein synthesis.
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Contact: Scott Turner
Scott_Turner@Brown.edu
401-863-1862
Brown University
18-May-2000