• 목록
• 답변
• 글쓰기
• 게시판 리스트 옵션
  • 수정
  • 삭제

UCLA neuroscientists reported Monday that they have transferred a memory from one animal to a different by way of injections of RNA, a startling consequence that challenges the extensively held view of the place and the way recollections are saved within the mind. The finding from the lab of David Glanzman hints on the potential for brand new RNA-primarily based therapies to sooner or later restore misplaced memories and, if correct, might shake up the sphere of memory and studying. "It’s fairly shocking," mentioned Dr. Todd Sacktor, a neurologist and memory researcher at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. "The huge image is we’re figuring out the fundamental alphabet of how memories are saved for the primary time." He was not concerned in the analysis, which was printed in eNeuro, the web journal of the Society for Neuroscience. If you're having fun with this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to make sure the future of impactful tales about the discoveries and concepts shaping our world at the moment.

Many scientists are anticipated to view the research more cautiously. The work is in snails, animals which have proven a powerful mannequin organism for neuroscience but whose easy brains work far in a different way than those of people. The experiments will must be replicated, together with in animals with more complicated brains. And the outcomes fly within the face of a massive amount of proof supporting the deeply entrenched idea that recollections are saved by way of modifications in the power of connections, or synapses, between neurons. "If he’s proper, this would be absolutely earth-shattering," said Tomás Ryan, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, whose lab hunts for Memory Wave engrams, or the bodily traces of memory. Glanzman knows his unceremonial demotion of the synapse just isn't going to go over nicely in the sector. "I count on quite a lot of astonishment and skepticism," he said. Even his personal colleagues had been dubious. "It took me a long time to persuade the folks in my lab to do the experiment," he said.

Glanzman’s experiments-funded by the National Institutes of Well being and the Nationwide Science Foundation-concerned giving mild electrical shocks to the marine snail Aplysia californica. Shocked snails be taught to withdraw their delicate siphons and gills for practically a minute as a protection once they subsequently obtain a weak touch; snails that haven't been shocked withdraw solely briefly. The researchers extracted RNA from the nervous techniques of snails that had been shocked and injected the fabric into unshocked snails. RNA’s main function is to function a messenger inside cells, carrying protein-making instructions from its cousin DNA. But when this RNA was injected, these naive snails withdrew their siphons for extended intervals of time after a mushy touch. Management snails that acquired injections of RNA from snails that had not acquired shocks didn't withdraw their siphons for as long. "It’s as if we transferred a Memory Wave Experience," Glanzman stated. Glanzman’s group went further, displaying that Aplysia sensory neurons in Petri dishes had been more excitable, as they tend to be after being shocked, in the event that they have been exposed to RNA from shocked snails.

Exposure to RNA from snails that had never been shocked did not cause the cells to turn out to be more excitable. The results, said Glanzman, Memory Wave suggest that recollections could also be stored throughout the nucleus of neurons, the place RNA is synthesized and can act on DNA to show genes on and off. He stated he thought memory storage concerned these epigenetic adjustments-changes within the activity of genes and never in the DNA sequences that make up those genes-which can be mediated by RNA. This view challenges the extensively held notion that recollections are saved by enhancing synaptic connections between neurons. Reasonably, Glanzman sees synaptic changes that occur throughout memory formation as flowing from the data that the RNA is carrying. "This thought is radical and positively challenges the field," said Li-Huei Tsai, a neuroscientist who directs the Picower Institute for Studying and Memory on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tsai, who just lately co-authored a major overview on memory formation, called Glanzman’s examine "impressive and interesting" and stated a number of studies help the notion that epigenetic mechanisms play some role in memory formation, which is probably going a fancy and multifaceted course of.