Morgan Sheng and Casper Hoogenraad just published a through review of recent attempts to understand the synapse at a quantitative level using mass spectrometry and electron microscopy. The focus is on the receiving end of synaptic transmission (the post-synapse). There is a highly organized, disc-shaped protein architecture just inside the post-synaptic side of a synapse […]

Let me take you to a place nice and quiet. There ain’t no one there to interrupt. Ain’t gotta rush. I just wanna take it nice and slow. – US-HER RA-YM-OND I just summarized in a previous post how eIF2alpha kinases can reduce the amount of a crucial resource needed for initiation of protein synthesis, […]

“Ya stressed out. Depressed out ya brain.” – Baatin I’ve been meaning to write about the Costa-Mattioli et al paper in the early April issue of Cell. It’s got some very cool findings, but there is a lot of background to get on board. So maybe we can take a running start by covering some […]

I just listened to Martha Nussbaum’s discussion of her new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future, on the Carnegie Council Podcast. Given that I know essentially nothing about India’s history or politics I would be interested if any of the more informed cats around could critique or corroborate her assessment of […]

Via Drug WarRant, Hitchens is playin’ my tune lately: An excerpt from his 21 Solutions to Save the World: The largest single change for the better in U.S. foreign policy, and one that could be accomplished simply by an act of political will, would be the abandonment of the socalled War on Drugs. This last […]

I was listening to a lecture by Christof Koch this morning, and I had a thought that I haven’t come across before regarding consciousness studies. There may be a very high technical bar for ethical studies into the nature of consciousness, higher than I expected before.My issue may just be the stretchiness of the term […]

Trevor at Epigenetics News follows up on our recent discussions about the term’s increasing popularity. He’s cites several good reasons why we might expect to see the term more often, and one reason that may not be all that good: With all of these high profile and highly funded areas becoming closely associated with epigenetics, […]

The new Showtime version of This American Life has a segment featuring Todd Sacktor and Andre Fenton. They published a remarkable paper (discussed on gnxp) last year showing that specific inhibition of PKM Zeta (a consitutively active version of protein kinase C) can erase memories. This is all in rats of course. So if you […]

Doing dissections is boring. Learning about international politics while doing dissections is less boring. Hence, I recommend checking about the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs podcast. Here’s a list of more educational podcasts from Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk, including a conference on Neural Correlates of Consciousness. On a less nerdy tip, these mixes […]

There is a gene I care about carrying a SNP associated with a phenotype I care about. Unfortunately, that SNP is intronic, and if it has an effect the prediction isn’t obvious. I would like very much to find a list of SNPs in significant LD with this one, but I am finding the HapMap/Mart […]

It appears that I’m not the only one musing on the meaning of ‘epigenetic’. This timely essay from Mark Ptashne in Current Biology, takes a hard line, even calling into question the connection between histone modifications and epigenetics. As a glance at the literature will reveal, however, histone modifications – acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation, and so […]

Fragile X mental retardation is a very common mental disability resulting from reduced expression of a protein called fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). The most obvious difference in Fragile X brains is that the receiving end of most excitatory synaptic input, dendritic spines, are misshapen. They look thin and immature rather than mushroom-y or […]

Epigenetics. What is it? Let’s ask some reputable sources. From the glossary of a review in the current Nature Reviews Genetics: Epigenetic – Refers to mitotically or meiotically heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve a change in DNA sequence. From the Cell epigenetics review issue a month and a half ago: Epigenetics, […]

I’m working on a follow-up to my knee-jerk negative reaction to Miller and Sweatt last week. Surveying the field, I found that Nature Reviews Genetics just dropped an issue focusing in epigenetics with a complementary website. At least a couple of the reviews spotlight our recently acquired ability to assay DNA methylation states on a […]

There’s a new article by Miller and Sweatt in Neuron claiming that DNA methylation is a step in memory formation. They show methylation and demethylation of particular genes (reelin and PP1) following fear conditioning, and they show that inhibition of DNA methyl transferases (the name says it all) during the memory consolidation can disrupt memory. […]

One sweet day I shall provide more original neuroscience content. In the meantime, enjoy the neuroanatomy refresher below the fold via Toothpaste For Dinner.toothpastefordinner.com

Cell’s new issue is accompanied by a podcast (mp3). Let’s hope they start cranking them out regularly. We have interviews with Francis Collins (about knockout mice, not Goddity God God) and Greg Hannon (about piRNAs, ~30 nucleotide regulatory RNAs in mouse nutz). And some other guy (David Fisher) talks about sun tanning and p53, but […]

The Leutgebs and the Mosers have brought us another interesting datapoint regarding how the hippocampus segregates or lumps the representation of spatial environmens. They recorded from the CA3 and dentate gyrus subregions of the hippocampus while they moved rats between a series of ‘morphed’ environments, moving gradually from a circular to a square arena. The […]

As long as we’re posting videos, you can catch Joseph Ledoux discussing the latest projects in his lab in the NIH neuroscience seminar series (video and audio available here). Also, all-around controversial dude, Bjorn Lomborg, does a TED talk about world problems and says AIDS prevention is high priority.

The use of transgenic mice in all areas of mammalian biology is now routine. We have transgenic mice that get breast cancer, have no immune system, and have every possible molecular defect associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. We even have Laurel and Hardy mice. Of course, my favorites are the memory mutants. There are mice that […]