Muscle and brain cells could have much more in the Municipality than they believed: now we know they share a subcellular structure.
The scientists and thinkers who have compared the brain over time to a muscle that must be trained did not go so far from the truth. Based on a research published on Cellbrain cells could share with those of the muscles a structure inside the cell that facilitates the transmission of signals. And that, if the muscles serve to contract, Neurons is useful for promoting the passage of impulses on long distanceswith a type of communication that consolidates learning and memory.
Inside the cell. The initial spark that opened the way to the discovery took place when a group of scientists from the Janelia Research Campus, a research body in neuroscience of the Hughes Medical Institute Opel Institute in Virginia (USA), studied with high resolution tools the molecules present on the surface of the endoplasmic reticulum of mammals neurons. The endoplasmic reticulum is a membrane network – a labyrinth of folds, loops and flattened bags calls cisterns – which extends in the cellular cytoplasmthe volume contained inside the cell.
A certain similarity. Within the endoplasmic network, the team noticed a subcellular structure observed before then only in the cells of the muscles: a sort of repeated scheme in the shape of a scale visible in Endoplasmic reticulum of the dendritesthe branch -shaped structures that transport the nerve signals to the central body (soma) of the neurons. The same structure was observed, thanks to the 3D electronic microscopy, in the neurons of the brain of a fly. But what is it for?
Contraction for muscles, transmission for neurons. Since in the field of cell physiology, “The structure is function”, As Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, senior author of the study, points out, the scientists have studied the same subcellular structure in muscle tissue cells, where this kind of molecular “scheme” is placed on the points of contact between the endoplasmic reticulum and the external membrane of the cell. In this position, this sort of molecules network Check the release of calcium ions in the contact sites between muscle cellsin fact allowing the muscle contraction.
In neurons, the transmission of calcium signals instead serves to communicate: scientists suspect that the subcellular structure discovered along the dendritis acts, in the “contact points”, like a network of signal repeaterswhich help to receive the nervous signal, to amplify it locally and propagate it on long distances. A process that can explain how cellular signals travel on long distances and are then processed by the brain.
If the mechanism is jammed. The results help to better understand the mechanisms with which the connections between neurons are strengthened, providing the base to stratify learning and build memories. Malfunctions of this process could contribute to diseases that compromise memory, such as Alzheimer’s.
