Grant: Project Grant

Neurons communicate via synapses. During development, synapses must grow and establish correct levels of communication. Failure to do so has major implications for neurological and psychiatric disorders during development and maturation. In adulthood, degeneration of synapses underlies many progressive degenerative disorders. Synapses are high energy places that need a constant supply of parts (or proteins) to make build themselves up and them carry out repairs and make adjustments. To get the right parts, synpases send requests back to the nucleus, which converts the request into the parts list that the synapse needs. Our project aims to figure out how the nucleus converts requests into the right type and number of parts, and to determine what some of these parts do at the synapse. We study this question during the developmental growth of motor neurons, which contact muscles to allow us to move and breath. Our work is directly relevant to motor neuron diseases, but we expect our work to provide fundamental understanding of this critical process that occurs in all other neurons. Failure of any part of this process is devastating to neuronal health, and underlies many disorders. This is because during early embryonic and childhood development, these parts sent by the nucleus are needed to help the synapse grow, establish communication and respond to developmental changes in brain function. In adulthood, these parts keep synapses in good repair and make necessary adjustments to keep the synapse working optimally. The Public Health Agency of Canada has reported that neurological conditions affect 3.6 million Canadians (~1/10th of the population), at a cost of billions in direct healthcare and family care costs. Given these devastating statistics, and our inability to effectively treat the majority of these disorders, it is critical that we make headway in understanding such basic processes as studied here that are required for basic neuronal function