Nanotech breakthrough shows how brain cells chatter

AFP to My Yahoo! ^ | Thu Oct 16,

[restornu]

Computer image mapping parts of the brain. French scientists using an innovative microscopic scanning technique say they have discovered that nerve cells almost buzz with molecular agitation when they communicate with each other.(AFP/File)

PARIS (AFP) - French scientists using an innovative microscopic scanning technique say they have discovered that nerve cells almost buzz with molecular agitation when they communicate with each other.

The work sheds light on how cells operate at the synapse -- the minute gap between neurons, as nerve cells are called.

Neurons communicate by sending chemical signals across the synapse, which then latch on to specific targets, known as receptors, on the membrane of the adjoining cell.

The chemicals activate an electrical signal in that cell, which then sends on a chemical signal to its neighbour, and so on down the line, eventually triggering the desired response or movement in the finger, hand, limb or other organ.

Until now, little was known about receptor movement, and it was thought that these vital "locks" that open to the heart of the cell were largely static.

But nanotechnology, harnessed to a video camera by French researchers, shows the receptors to be extraordinarily active and that they even move around dynamically on the membrane surface.

The discovery is important, because it highlights the complex, highly mobile mechanism by which a receiving cell is able to detect just a single molecule.

The team, led by Antoine Triller, head of an Inserm unit that specialises in synapse research, and Maxime Dahan, of the Kastler Brossel Laboratory at Paris's Ecole Normale Superieure, publishes its work in Friday's issue of Science, the US scientific weekly.

Their observations were made on spinal cord tissue from rats, and used a probe called quantum dots -- fluorescent semiconductors, with a cadmium-selenium core and a zinc sulphide shell -- to tag receptors for glycine, a key synapse signalling chemical.

The "dots" measure just five to 10 billionths of a metre across, and are just a quarter of the smallest nanoparticle tracers used so far. Those particles, made of gold or latex, range from 40 to 500 billionths of a metre, which means they are too big to reveal the single-molecule properties of living cells.

[restornu]

co-exist Universe as one is being terminated with brain damage at the same time French scientists using an innovative microscopic scanning technique say they have discovered that nerve cells almost buzz with molecular agitation when they communicate with each other.

Terri lived this long why not a little longer what is the rush?

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[RightWingNilla]

Hey PH....more material for the list.

[sourcery]

FYI

[Moonman62]

In France they just wheel the unwanted into a hot attic while they go on vacation.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[restornu]

How do you get evolution out of this?

[ASA Vet]

Was there somewhere in their comments that made any such claim?
There are other things in science than evolution theory.

Patrick pings folks to interesting science stuff he finds.

[js1138]

True.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Shryke]

Thanks. I want to know why the computer modeled head has acorns in his brain and flashlights behind his eyes though.

[Ogmios]

This is science, so he pings the list, did you not read the disclaimer?

OH, and FYI, Jesse has been banned from the site, he will no longer be attacking those that disagree with him religiously, nor scientifically here on FreeRepublic.

[Ogmios]

Because he's french.....

[Shryke]

AHA! It's all becoming so clear now....

[restornu]

Why?

[restornu]

So is my father French!

[Ogmios]

My Father is 1/2 French, my grandfather was french, and my Great Grandfather moved here from France, what's your point? ;)

Which makes me like 2/3 French, except that I am 100% American, so if anyone has a right to make fun of Frenchies, it's me.

[restornu]

My father is 100% French biologically!

See all I said was my fathers French and you want to content!

[Ogmios]

I hope that you noticed that I was trying to be humorous, in the same vein that I assumed your post was placed.

Yes, I make fun of the French, the socialist, cheeseeating Surrender Monkeys that they are. LOL

[restornu]

I think all of the real French left France enons ago. It was invaded by Cassack.

Cos·sack n. A member of a people of southern European Russia and adjacent parts of Asia, noted as cavalrymen especially during czarist times. –Cossack adj.

Is there not an Muslim influence today!