Nano-motors facilitate communication between brain cells

MRC-funded scientists led by Dr Josef Kittler (UCL Neuroscience) have identified how nano-sized motors in nerve cells help to regulate the balance of communication in the brain. The findings may also help to explain why communication between nerve cells is disrupted in Huntington's disease, leading to altered electrical behaviour of nerve cells in this disease. Nerve cells send signals to each other by releasing chemicals at specialized junctions between the cells called synapses. One key neurotransmitter, called GABA, acts on special proteins (GABA receptors) to generate inhibition, which stops the brain from becoming too excitable. In a paper published this week in the journal Neuron , Dr Kittler reveals how a protein named HAP1, working together with molecular motor proteins, helps to guide the GABA receptors to the synapses. Alison Twelvetrees (UCL Neuroscience) first author on the study, said: ?This work advances our understanding of how the GABA receptor proteins are delivered to synapses to control the level of inhibition in the brain. We show that the receptors are transported to synapses by small nanometer-sized motors, on intracellular protein tracks called microtubules?.