{"id":155785,"date":"2023-01-19T13:22:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T19:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/researchers-find-a-protein-thats-involved-in-helping-control-the-architecture-of-connections-between-neurons"},"modified":"2023-01-19T13:22:19","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T19:22:19","slug":"researchers-find-a-protein-thats-involved-in-helping-control-the-architecture-of-connections-between-neurons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/researchers-find-a-protein-thats-involved-in-helping-control-the-architecture-of-connections-between-neurons","title":{"rendered":"Researchers find a protein that\u2019s involved in helping control the architecture of connections between neurons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-find-a-protein-thats-involved-in-helping-control-the-architecture-of-connections-between-neurons.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our ability to learn, move, and sense our world comes from the neurons in our brain. This information moves through our brain between neurons that are linked together by tens of trillions of tiny structures called synapses. Although tiny, synapses are not simple and must be precisely organized to function properly. Indeed, diseases like autism and Alzheimer\u2019s are increasingly linked to defects in the organization and number of these tiny structures. Now researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have found a new way in which synapses organization is controlled, which could eventually lead to better treatments for neurological diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers who study how <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/synapses\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">synapses<\/a> grow and are lost have long focused on a molecule called PSD-95, which helps create and maintain the scaffolding around which a synapse is built. A new paper, publishing in <i>Nature Neuroscience<\/i> October 19th, reveals that a second protein interacts with PSD-95 and enables adaptive changes, such as changes in sensation, to be translated into changes in the synaptic scaffold, changing the amount of PSD-95 at the synapse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can\u2019t see or learn or talk without synapses working properly,\u201d says senior author Matthew Dalva, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and the Farber Institute of Neuroscience at Jefferson and leader of the Theme Team for Synapse Biology. \u201cWe need a better understanding of how the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain<\/a> works normally in order to develop a better sense of where to intervene to stop or cure diseases of the brain. It\u2019s important to understand how these molecules interact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our ability to learn, move, and sense our world comes from the neurons in our brain. This information moves through our brain between neurons that are linked together by tens of trillions of tiny structures called synapses. Although tiny, synapses are not simple and must be precisely organized to function properly. Indeed, diseases like autism [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}