Klk8, a multifunctional protease in the brain and skin: analysis of knockout mice

2010 ◽  
Vol 391 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigetaka Yoshida

Abstract Klk8 is a tryptic serine protease with limited substrate specificity. Klk8 mRNA is expressed in many developing organs, whereas its expression is confined to limited regions, including the hippocampus, in adults. In the hippocampus, Klk8 is involved in activity-dependent synaptic changes such as long-term potentiation, which was found to be suppressed in Klk8 knockout (KO) mice. Oligodendrocytes only expressed Klk8 mRNA after injury to the central nervous system. The epidermis of the skin is one of the tissues that exhibits a high level of KLK8 expression. Klk8 might be involved in desquamation through the degradation of adhesive molecules that connect layers of the epidermis. Klk8 might thus be involved in tissue development and rearrangement.

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 587-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Gibon ◽  
Philip A. Barker

Neurotrophins have been intensively studied and have multiple roles in the brain. Neurotrophins are first synthetized as proneurotrophins and then cleaved intracellularly and extracellularly. Increasing evidences demonstrate that proneurotrophins and mature neurotrophins exerts opposing role in the central nervous system. In the present review, we explore the role of nerve growth factor (NGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin 3 (NT3), and neurotrophin 4 (NT4) and their respective proform in cellular processes related to learning and memory. We focused on their roles in synaptic activity and plasticity in the brain with an emphasis on long-term potentiation, long-term depression, and basal synaptic transmission in the hippocampus and the temporal lobe area. We also discuss new findings on the role of the Val66Met polymorphism on the BDNF propeptide on synaptic activity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingxue Ma ◽  
Yao Ni ◽  
Zirong Chi ◽  
Wanqing Meng ◽  
Haiyang Yu ◽  
...  

AbstractThe ability to emulate multiplexed neurochemical transmission is an important step toward mimicking complex brain activities. Glutamate and dopamine are neurotransmitters that regulate thinking and impulse signals independently or synergistically. However, emulation of such simultaneous neurotransmission is still challenging. Here we report design and fabrication of synaptic transistor that emulates multiplexed neurochemical transmission of glutamate and dopamine. The device can perform glutamate-induced long-term potentiation, dopamine-induced short-term potentiation, or co-release-induced depression under particular stimulus patterns. More importantly, a balanced ternary system that uses our ambipolar synaptic device backtrack input ‘true’, ‘false’ and ‘unknown’ logic signals; this process is more similar to the information processing in human brains than a traditional binary neural network. This work provides new insight for neuromorphic systems to establish new principles to reproduce the complexity of a mammalian central nervous system from simple basic units.


Author(s):  
Ana Turchetti-Maia ◽  
Tal Shomrat ◽  
Binyamin Hochner

We show that the cephalopod vertical lobe (VL) is a promising system for assessing the function and organization of the neuronal circuitry mediating complex learning and memory behavior. Studies in octopus and cuttlefish VL networks suggest an independent evolutionary convergence into a matrix organization of a divergence-convergence (“fan-out fan-in”) network with activity-dependent long-term plasticity mechanisms. These studies also show, however, that the properties of the neurons, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and mechanisms of induction and maintenance of long-term potentiation are different from those evolved in vertebrates and other invertebrates, and even highly variable among these two cephalopod species. This suggests that complex networks may have evolved independently multiple times and that, even though memory and learning networks share similar organization and cellular processes, there are many molecular ways of constructing them.


1999 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 2024-2028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongyan Wang ◽  
John J. Wagner

The activity history of a given neuron has been suggested to influence its future responses to synaptic input in one prominent model of experience-dependent synaptic plasticity proposed by Bienenstock, Cooper, and Munro (BCM theory). Because plasticity of synaptic plasticity (i.e., metaplasticity) is similar in concept to aspects of the BCM proposal, we have tested the possibility that a form of metaplasticity induced by a priming stimulation protocol might exhibit BCM-like characteristics. CA1 field excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) obtained from rat hippocampal slices were used to monitor synaptic responses before and after conditioning stimuli (3–100 Hz) of the Schaffer collateral inputs. A substantial rightward shift (>5-fold) in the frequency threshold between long-term depression (LTD) and long-term potentiation (LTP) was observed <1 h after priming. This change in the LTD/P crossover point occurred at both primed and unprimed synaptic pathways. These results provide new support for the existence of a rapid, heterosynaptic, experience-dependent mechanism that is capable of modifying the synaptic plasticity phenomena that are commonly proposed to be important for developmental and learning/memory processes in the brain.


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