Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Single Neuron Gene May Be The Key To Unlock Mysteries of The Brain

Friday, June 24, 2016

Single Neuron Gene May Be The Key To Unlock Mysteries of The Brain

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This, after a team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute of the University of California, San Diego and Illumina Inc., claims their study reveals groundbreaking results in determining how a single neuron gene is responsible for breaking down information from DNA to RNA and even protein production in the body.

Single neuron gene ‘communicates’ with cells

The study recently published in the journal Science, researchers were able to isolate and analyze single neuronal nuclei from the human brain that allows classification of around 16 subtypes in the brain’s cerebral cortex that processes cognition, thought and other mental functions.

“Through a wonderful scientific collaboration, we found an enormous amount of transcriptomic diversity from cell to cell that will be relevant to understanding the normal brain and its diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and depression,” says TSRI Professor and neuroscientist Jerold Chun, who collaborated the study with bioengineers Kun Zhang and Wei Wang of UC San Diego and Jian-Bing Fan of Illumina.

Relatively just the same

Even while parts of the cerebral cortex – also known as the brain’s ‘gray matter’ – look different under a microscope due to its varying shapes and densities that form cortical layers and larger regions- the neurons are all fairly the same.

Understanding the brain is a unique organ the researchers agree that individual brain cells are unique but has the possibility of reflecting distinct transcriptomic differences like the RNA carrying copies of the DNA code structure outside the nucleus to help determine which proteins the cells produce.

Using highly-developed tools to isolate and sequence single cell nuclei, they were able to decipher the microscopic quantities of mRNA in each nucleus that revealed different combinations of the 16 subtypes that make the brain’s regions look and function differently.

They found that the neurons showed similarities, but also exhibited many differences in the transcriptomic profiles revealing that single neurons with shared characteristics would kead to differences in their cellular function.

“Now we can actually point to an enormous amount of molecular heterogeneity in single neurons of the brain,” said Gwendolyn E. Kaeser, a UC San Diego Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program student studying in Chun’s lab at TSRI.

This groundbreaking discovery on the single neuron gene, according to experts, may soon pave the way for new approaches in the treatment of degenerative diseases and develop better medicines and therapy.

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