Cypin is found throughout the body, but in the brain it regulates nerve cell or neuron branching. Branching or dendrite growth is an important process in normal brain function and is thought to increase when a person learns. A reduction in branching is associated with certain neurological diseases.

"The identification of cypin and understanding how it works in the brain is particularly exciting since it opens up new avenues for the treatment of serious neurological disorders," said principal investigator Bonnie Firestein, assistant professor of cell biology and neuroscience at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. "This paves the way to designing new drugs that could target this protein molecule."

Proteins or the genes that code for them have become the targets of choice for developing precisely focused, effective new drug therapies one of the outcomes of the many revelations provided by the Human Genome Project.

Firestein first identified and isolated cypin in 1999 during her postdoctoral research. She is currently focusing on how it works in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain associated with the regulation of emotions and memory.

"We knew that cypin existed elsewhere in the body where it performs other functions, but no one knew why it was present in the brain," Firestein. Her new research determined that cypin in the brain works as an enzyme involved in shaping neurons.

"One end of a neuron looks like a tree and, in the hippocampus, cypin controls the growth of its branches," she explained. "An increase in the number of branches provides additional sites where a neuron can receive information that it can pass along, enhancing communication
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Contact: Joseph Blumberg
blumberg@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084 x652
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
18-Jan-2004