神经生物学

Schizophrenia is a group of illnesses of unknown origin with a yearly prevalence of 0.4–0.8% in the general population (Dohrenwend, 1980). Schizophrenia is characterized by a spectrum of symptoms that are commonly grouped into positive (including hallucinations, incoherence, delu ...

Before the advent of the thalidomide tragedy, it had often been assumed that the maternal biosystems of hepatic detoxification and metabolism, together with the placental barrier, acted as a shield and were a natural protection for the embryo from any maternal exposure to drugs. As subsequent ...

The value of in vivo electrophysiological studies for revealing information about peptidergic neurons and peptide actions has been discussed by Ferguson and Renaud in this volume. Nevertheless, carrying out pharmacological studies in vivo raises a number of problems with respect to ...

The aim of this chapter is to describe the usefulness of relatively simple model systems to study the roles played by neuropeptides in the mediation of adaptive and homeostatic behaviors. In particular, we will discuss some of the experimental approaches to exploit the unique characterist ...

In theory only one excitatory and one inhibitory transmitter should be sufficient to operate the nervous system. Therefore the recent discovery that, besides an already large number of well-established classical neurotransmitters, many small peptides are also capable of convert ...

The discovery that many peptide hormones previously identified in endocrine glands and/or in the endocrine brain (H�kfelt et al., 1980) are also present in central and peripheral neurons has unexpectedly increased the list of potential messengers participating in neuronal communi ...

With the advent of modern chromatographic instrumentation and improved sequencing methods that allow for isolation and characterization of minute amounts of biological material, a host of biologically active peptides are now known. More recently, the dramatic development of ge ...

Recently there has been an explosion of information on peptides that may act as neurotransmitters or neuromodulator substances in the brain and periphery. Many investigators interested in the effects of neuropeptides have made use of radioligand binding techniques to identify pot ...

During the course of the last decade a considerable number of biologically active peptides has been identified in the nervous system; several of these recently discovered peptides fulfill the criteria for a neurotransmitter function (H�kfelt et al., 1980a); Snyder, 1980; Bloom, 1981; Krie ...

Numerous peptides have been localized with immunocytochemical techniques in neuronal cell bodies, axons, and nerve endings of the central nervous system (CNS). The widespread distribution of pepndes within the brain and spinal cord implies that these substances may function under p ...

The role of protein phosphorylation in regulating and integrating the activity of the nervous system has become widely appreciated during the last few decades. Both extracellular signals (e.g., neurotransmitters, hormones, growth factors, and electrical activity of the nerve cell ...

Nerve terminal depolarization leads to Ca2+ influx and the exocytotic release of neurotransmitters (Jessell and Kandel, 1993; Kelly, 1993). Elucidation of the regulatory influences on this primary function of the nerve terminal is of fundamental importance in understanding synap ...

Protein phosphorylation/dephosphorylation systems have evolved as a primary means through which cellular processes are regulated posttranslationally. Indeed, most transmembrane signals exert their biological effects, at least in part, by altering the balance of protein ...

Over the past four decades, studies directed toward the elucidation of mechanisms involved in the hormonal regulation of metabolism have burgeoned into the field we now know as cellular signal transduction. Both then and now, the role of protein phosphorylation has been central to these inv ...

This chapter describes the types of protein methylation that might be confronted in investigations of the nervous system, and summarizes technical approaches that have proven useful in elucidating the chemistries and identities of methylated proteins. Several distinct protein ...

Following translation, many proteins undergo further modifications that can dramatically affect both their physical properties and biological function (Wold and Moldave, 1984; Freedman and Hawkins, 1985; Harding and Crabbe, 1992). These posttranslational modifications a ...

Reversible modifications of cellular proteins often serve as key steps in signal transduction and effector pathways, and the investigation of these modifications has been a principal route of access to signaling mechanisms. Ten years ago, for example, tyrosine phosphorylation was an ...

Generally, genomic DNA is used either for the construction of genomic libraries or for Southern blot analysis. For several reasons, it is frequently preferable in the field of invertebrate neurobiology to screen, at least initially, genomic rather than complementary DNA (cDNA) librari ...

Neuronal voltage-activated Ca2+ channels have received consider- able attention from scientists because of the central role played by Ca2+ in the transduction of electrical activity to chemical signals. The importance of neuronal electrical activity resulting in a rise in intra- cel ...

Conventional agarose gel electrophoresis is a widely used technique for the analysis of many kinds of biological molecules, including fragments of DNA. It has one major limitation, namely its inability to resolve DNA fragments of greater than approx 30 kb in length. In human genetics, the enor ...