有獎翻譯記憶到底由什麼組成？
點擊上方「轉化醫學網」訂閱我們！
乾貨 | 靠譜 | 實用
第 25 彈
Title：What are memories made of? New study sheds light on key protein
Ask a nonscientist what memories are made of and you"ll likely conjure images of childhood birthday parties or wedding days. Charles Hoeffer thinks about proteins.
For five years, the assistant professor of integrative physiology at CU Boulder has been working to better understand a protein called AKT, which is ubiquitous in brain tissue and instrumental in enabling the brain to adapt to new experiences and lay down new memories.
Until now, scientists have known very little about what it does in the brain.
But in a new paper funded by the National Institutes of Health, Hoeffer and his co-authors spell it out for the first time, showing that AKT comes in three distinct varieties residing in different kinds of brain cells and affecting brain health in very distinct ways.
The discovery could lead to new, more targeted treatments for everything from glioblastoma—the brain cancer Sen. John McCain has—to Alzheimer"s disease and schizophrenia.
"AKT is a central protein that has been implicated in a bevy of neurological diseases yet we know amazingly little about it," Hoeffer said. "Our paper is the first to comprehensively examine what its different forms are doing in the brain and where."
Discovered in the 1970s and known best as an "oncogene" (one that, when mutated, can promote cancer), AKT has more recently been identified as a key player in promoting "synaptic plasticity," the brain"s ability to strengthen cellular connections in response to experience.
"Let"s say you see a great white shark and you are scared and your brain wants to form a memory of what"s going on. You have to make new proteins to encode that memory," he said. AKT is one of the first proteins to come online, a central switch that turns on the memory factory.
But not all AKTs are created equal.
For the study, Hoeffer"s team silenced the three different isoforms, or varieties, of AKT in mice and observed their brain activity.
They made a number of key discoveries:
AKT2 is found exclusively in astroglia, the supportive, star-shaped cells in the brain and spinal cord that are often impacted in brain cancer and brain injury.
"That is a really important finding," said co-author Josien Levenga, who worked on the project as a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder. "If you could develop a drug that targeted only AKT2 without impacting other forms, it might be more effective in treating certain issues with fewer side-effects."
The researchers also found that AKT1 is ubiquitous in neurons and appears to be the most important form in promoting the strengthening of synapses in response to experience, aka memory formation. (This finding is in line with previous research showing that mutations in AKT1 boost risk of schizophrenia and other brain disorders associated with a flaw in the way a patient perceives or remembers experiences.)
AKT3 appears to play a key role in brain growth, with mice whose AKT3 gene is silenced showing smaller brain size.
"Before this, there was an assumption that they all did basically the same thing in the same cells in the same way. Now we know better," Hoeffer said.
He notes that pan-AKT inhibitors have already been developed for cancer treatment, but he envisions a day when drugs could be developed to target more specific versions of the protein (AKT1 enhancers for Alzheimer"s and schizophrenia, AKT2 inhibitors for cancer), leaving the others forms untouched, preventing side-effects.
More animal research is underway to determine what happens to behavior when different forms of the protein go awry.
"Isoform specific treatments hold great promise for the design of targeted therapies to treat neurological diseases with much greater efficacy and accuracy than those utilizing a one-size-fits-all approach," the authors conclude. "This study is an important step in that direction."
The study is published in eLife.
投稿郵箱：wangjiani@360zhyx.com
投稿規則
1.本次活動為自願參加，關注每日文章推送即可，每周一、周三、周五發布翻譯稿件，周二、周四、周六進行翻譯文章刊登；每篇文章投稿時間為2天，周一的推送截止翻譯日期為當周周三，以此類推，節假日順延投稿時間
2.投稿形式：以word文字版為準，文件名為：第幾彈+姓名 。以附件形式發送至投稿郵箱。
3.參與活動均可獲得轉化醫學網小禮品（價值30元左右）1份，被錄取的文章將得到100元/篇的稿酬；您可在郵件正文或附件中留下地址號碼領取禮物，因為禮物的郵寄可能需要一段時間，請您耐心等待
4.投稿文件轉化醫學網編輯部收到後，會進行審核，我們會在2~3個工作日內給與回復
5.得到文稿被錄用郵件回復的作者可添加轉化醫學網內容部同事微信領取相應微信紅包
6.本次活動最終解釋權歸轉化醫學網所有
END
活動
推薦
轉折點——生物醫藥招聘第一平台
TAG:轉化醫學網 |