神经生物学

Muscle-specific kinase (MuSK) is a RTK that is specifically expressed in skeletal muscle fibers and critical for the formation and maintenance of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), a peripheral synapse formed between motoneurons and muscle fibers (1, 2). The acetylcholine receptors ( ...

Excitotoxicity via N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDA-r) is a key mechanism of neurodegeneration following ischemia and other brain pathologies. We here describe the use of a fast, reliable and easily reproducible in vitro model of excitotoxicity induced with NMDA stimulation ...

Protein phosphorylation is one of the key mechanisms controlling cellular signaling networks. Due to the low abundance of phosphorylated proteins and weaker ionization efficiency of phosphopeptides during mass spectrometric analyses, it is highly required to remove abundant ...

Protein kinase profiling can provide a basis for understanding the molecular origins of diseases and, potentially, for developing tools for therapeutic intervention. It is therefore very important to develop advanced experimental procedures for convenient and accurate dete ...

Protein kinases are key modulators of intracellular signal transduction cascades, which determine various events in neuronal cells such as replication and differentiation. For many years, protein kinases were �analyzed mostly by biochemical methods, which could handle the cel ...

As the rate of biomedical discovery is rising exponentially, electronic databases have become particularly effective in organizing and sharing scientific knowledge. Due to a well-characterized genome, robust behavioral responses and physiological similarity to humans, t ...

Egr-1 (also known as zif268, Krox-24, NGFI-A, and ZENK) has been one of the most widely immediate early genes used to map specific neuronal populations activated during behavior in mammals and birds. However, the use of egr-1 mapping technique in nontraditional model systems depends on the evolut ...

The technique of intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection is a useful neuroethological tool for studying the central actions of drugs on behavior of conscious animals because many drugs do not cross the blood–brain barrier, which limits the extent of drug action to the CNS. In this chapter ...

Over the past decades, zebrafish have been presented as a novel and valuable tool for modeling complex human diseases. Epilepsy is a serious brain disorder with multiple genetic and environmental causes. Our poor understanding of its pathogenesis requires novel paradigms and model org ...

This protocol provides an overview for performing a complete quantitative trait loci mapping experiment using the zebrafish, with an aim to use it to dissect a behavioral trait. This protocol covers the selection of the behavioral assay, the breeding design of the experiment, the generation ...

Zebrafish is rapidly becoming a popular model species for neurobehavioral and psychopharmacological research. The startle response represents the instinctive, evolutionarily conserved reaction of an organism to novel unexpected and/or aversive stimuli. While startle t ...

Although adult zebrafish are increasingly utilized as a model organism in neurobehavioral research, their habituation responses have only recently been evaluated in detail. When exposed to a novel environment, zebrafish demonstrate marked habituation responses, similar to t ...

Active avoidance conditioning in goldfish is a well-established behavioral paradigm to study learning and memory. Using active avoidance conditioning, investigators have discovered a good deal about learning and memory in goldfish. The behavioral methods and findings with gol ...

This protocol describes the cued fear conditioning task, designed to test the acquisition of the association between a fearful stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US) and a cue (conditioned stimulus, CS) in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Here we use electrical shock as a US, and red light as a CS, both of whi ...

A brief summary of teleost spatial navigation research is followed by a description of a paradigm for the evaluation of egocentric-based, or viewpoint-dependent, spatial learning and memory function in zebrafish. The three-axis maze and testing protocol are used to evaluate the effects ...

Zebrafish are a popular model organism in neuroscience research, recently emerging as an excellent species to study complex social phenotypes. For example, zebrafish actively form shoals, which can be used to quantify their shoaling behaviors. Zebrafish also display strong social p ...

Zebrafish spend the majority of their time in groups, called shoals. Shoaling behavior is complex and dynamic: fish leave and rejoin the shoal, distances between shoal-members oscillate, and the speed and polarization of the shoal change on timescales of seconds to minutes. All these featur ...

In this protocol, we describe a high-throughput and inexpensive assay for anxiety-related behaviors in zebrafish. The behavioral observations occur while fish are housed individually in 1-L tanks commonly found in commercial zebrafish rearing systems. Behavioral indices incl ...

The Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM)-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is a major regulator of synaptic �plasticity. CaMKII function depends on complex regulation of its activity and localization by Ca2+/CaM and several auto-phosphorylation reactions. Auto-phosphorylation at T286 ...

PKNs are serine/threonine protein kinases that have conserved catalytic domains homologous to those of protein kinase C (PKC) family members and regulatory regions containing antiparallel coiled-coil (ACC) domains and C2-like domains. PKN1 in particular is abundant in the brain, a ...