Molecule may help maintain brain's synaptic balance
Now researchers at Jefferson have discovered a molecule that may play a role in helping maintain the balance of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. The results were published in the journal eLife , a project of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Institute. Timothy Mosca, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Vickie and Jack Farber Institute for Neuroscience of Thomas Jefferson University, discovered that a molecule called LRP4, was important in creating excitatory synapses -- the ones that keep a message passing from one neuron to the next. When the researchers knocked out the LRP4 gene in fruit flies, they saw a 40 percent loss of excitatory synaptic connections in the brain, but no such loss of inhibitory synapses, suggesting that the molecule was specific to one kind of synapse. The researchers used a new technology called expansion microscopy to get a better view of the fruit fly neurons. "In most case...