Brent Kearney

A new study from UBC researcher Ana Mingorance-Le Meur, working with Professor Timothy O’Connor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, has revealed the mechanisms that control neuronal growth in the brain. As we age, the growth of neurons slows and settles into a relatively fixed neural network for our adult lives. This is why the brain has trouble growing around injuries — nerves are naturally repressed from further growth, to prevent over-growth.

This new research, published in Nature’s EMBO Journal, identifies the mechanisms responsible for stimulating neural growth and for repressing neural growth. The repressive mechanism is the protein calpain, and the stimulating mechanism is the protein cortactin.

“The maintenance of neuronal connections is an active process that requires constant repression of the formation of nerve sprouts by the protein calpain to avoid uncontrolled growth,” says Mingorance-Le Meur, who is also a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC and VCH Research Institute. “But a consequence of this role is that calpain limits neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to repair itself. The next step is to find a way to enhance neural plasticity without interfering with the good connections that are already in place.

Drugs that block calpain and/or enhance cortactin should lead to effective new treatments for brain injury patients.

Thanks to KurzweilAI.net for the link.