The receptors of neurotransmitters move very rapidly. This mobility plays an essential, and hitherto unsuspected, role in the passage of nerve impulses from one neuron to another, thus controlling the reliability of data transfer. This has recently been demonstrated by scientists in the "Physiologie cellulaire de la synapse" Laboratory (CNRS/Université Bordeaux 2) coordinated by Daniel Choquet, senior researcher at CNRS.
By enabling a clearer understanding of the mechanisms involved in neuronal transmissions, this work opens the way to new therapeutic targets for the neurological and psychiatric disorders that depend on poor neuronal communication (Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, OCD, etc.). Fruit of a collaboration with physicists in the Centre de physique moléculaire optique et hertzienne (CPMOH, CNRS/Université Bordeaux 1) and German and American research teams(1), these findings were published on April 11, 2008 in
Science.
|
| ©Magali Mondin and Daniel Choquet / CNRS
|
| Fluorescence image of a neuron labeled with three colors: a pre-synaptic marker (blue), a post-synaptic marker (red) and glutamate receptors (green). The white color at the tip of the dendritic spines indicates an accumulation of receptors.
|
