Figuring out how hundreds of different kinds of brain cells develop from their unique expression of thousands of genes promises to not only advance understanding of how the brain works in health, but also what goes wrong in disease. A new MIT study that precisely probes this 'molecular logic' in two neuron types of the Drosophila fruit fly, shows that even similar cells push and pull many levers to develop distinct functions.
profiles," said study senior author Troy Littleton, Menicon Professor of Neuroscience in MIT's Departments of Biology and Brain and Cognitive Sciences."That information can be used as a toolkit for studying how newly found disease genes map on to those particular neurons to indicate which ones might be most affected in specific brain disorders."
On the output side of things, the phasic neurons produced much more powerful signals when stimulated and were more likely to send them than tonic neurons were. Analysis showed that the synaptic sites that prompt glutamate release, called active zones , took in moreA particularly new and intriguing finding was that the AZs in tonic and phasic neurons took on different shapes. Tonic AZs were round, like donuts, while phasic ones were more triangular or star-shaped.
The team found that transport proteins were more prominently expressed in phasic neurons, perhaps explaining how they keep up with the greater demand to forge more synapses across many muscles. The team also found that while tonic neurons express"sialylation" genes to attach sugars to proteins on their synaptic membrane, phasic ones expressed unique"ubiquitin" genes that break down proteins.
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