In Map of Brain Junction, Avenues to Answers

December 22, 2010 | Source: New York Times

Researchers at the U.K.-based Sanger Institute have created the first exact inventory of all 1,461 protein components of the neuron synaptic information-processing machinery, called the “post-synaptic density.”

The work should help in understanding how the synapse lays down memories, as well as identify the basis of the many diseases that are caused by defects in the synapse’s delicate machinery. They have also tied their catalog into the human genome sequence, connecting each protein to the gene that contains instructions for making it. and found that mutations in 169 of the synaptic genes led to 269 different human diseases.