Synapse Complexity: Origins and Organization
- When?
- Thursday 17 March 2011, 14:00 to 15:00
- Open to:
- Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Professor Seth Grant, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge
Professor Seth Grant from the Genes to Cognition Programme, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, will visit the University of Surrey to give a presentation to the Department of Computing and all are welcome to attend.
For over a century it has been known that the synapse – the junction between nerve cells – is of fundamental importance in organizing brain circuits and behavior.
In the last 10 years, molecular methods have described the protein constituents of synapses and uncovered an unexpectedly high degree of complexity: in humans and other mammals there are over 1000 proteins in the synapse. These findings have led to a series of questions, some of which have surprising answers. Why do synapses have so many proteins and how do these proteins process information and control behavior? How did this complexity evolve and are synapses the same in all animals? Could an understanding of this complexity lead to new ways to understand, diagnose and treat brain diseases? These questions will be addressed in the seminar.