Grant: Project Grant

Neuronal activity is based on electrical signals in the cell wall of the neurons, leading to socalled action potentials. Small proteins in the cell wall, named ion channels, generate the electrical signals by letting sodium, calcium and potassium ions enter or leave the cells selectively and precisely timed. Learning and formation of memory is caused by repeatedly conditioning the electrical paths in the brain, reinforcing or abandoning neuronal connections. Upon this repeated or prolonged activation, the ion channels undergo an adaptation, which means that they develop a kind of short-term memory but on the scale of a single protein. The aim of this study is to understand how these molecular memories work. In principal, we are performing biomedical "reverse engineering" to unravel how the proteins work on the molecular level. To this end, we will use biophysical methods, in particular optical spectroscopy methods, (fluorescence) to directly follow movements of specific regions of the channels. These measurements are combined with functional measurements to correlate, in time, movement and function, and with molecular biology to manipulate the protein on an atomic level.