By News Staff | April 11th
2015 09:30
Researchers have discovered
how nerve cells adjust to low energy environments during the brain's growth
process, which may one day help find treatments for nerve cell
damage and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
diseases.
Neurons in the brain have
extraordinarily high energy demands due to complex dendrites that expand to
high volume and surface areas. It is also known that neurons are the first to
die from restriction of blood supply to tissues, causing a shortage of oxygen
and glucose needed for cellular metabolism.
Little was known, however,
on how cells adjust to low energy level environments in the developing brain,
when mitochondria, the so-called "power plants" of cells, do not
delivered on time, and a lag in the energy distribution occurs, which may lead
to a variety of neurodegenerative disorders.
To unlock the mystery, the
research team studied mitochondria and energy consumption in a live, growing
nerve cell over the course of a week.
Credit: Mineko Kengaku,
Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS)
"If neurons try to
grow in low ATP energy levels, they could end up deformed, and even worse, put
the life of the cell itself at stake," Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.. "Since a
single mitochondria in the root of the cell is not enough to supply energy to the
nerve ends, the cell distributes mitochondria to its most outer branches to
deliver power where energy levels are scarce."
In areas of low ATP energy
concentrations, chemical changes were brought by molecular proteins, which stopped the dendrites from growing further.
"We found two protein molecules that synergistically produced enzymes to allocate
energy molecules where it is direly needed for cellular survival," says
Mineko Kengaku, the principal investigator of the study from iCeMS.
In the future, Kengaku and
her co-authors envision treatments for incurable diseases by mapping the nerve
cell metabolism in an energy-deprived state. "If we can get a better
understanding of an unhealthy neuron, we may someday find ways to cure pathologies
caused by them."
Published in the
Journal of Neuroscience.
No comments:
Post a Comment