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SUMMARY:BMI Seminar // Survival and plasticity in the aging brain
DTSTART:20180307T121500
DTEND:20180307T131500
DTSTAMP:20260610T104144Z
UID:587528e1554ce8d32988ea33e9a4e64a20157a8fc0358b696138b0b4
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Carlos Dotti\, Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa\, Un
 iversidad Autónoma de Madrid\, Madrid\, Spain\nLearning and memory declin
 e with age. The same can be said about long-term potentiation (LTP) and lo
 ng-term depression (LTD)\, which are two cellular models of learning and m
 emory. On the other hand\, aging is not paralleled by neuronal loss\, impl
 ying the existence of most strong survival mechanisms at the same time whe
 n synaptic function decays. It is unclear whether (and how) these two char
 acteristic events of the old brain are molecularly linked.  We have recen
 tly demonstrated that during aging hippocampal neurons gradually lose chol
 esterol from the plasma membrane\, being this most evident in synaptic fra
 ctions.  The cholesterol loss is compensated by the increase in other lip
 ids (i.e. sphingomyelin) resulting in a significant change in membrane flu
 idity with age\, naturally affecting the clustering\, lateral diffusion an
 d exo-endocytosis rates of a number of membrane receptors all in all affec
 ting cell function.  One of the most striking functional consequences of 
 the membrane fluidity change with age is a strong ligand-independent activ
 ation of some of the  receptor tyrosine kinase family members due to chan
 ges in receptor conformation\, resulting in tonic auto-phosphorylation and
  the robust downstream activation of the PI3K/Akt hub. While on the one ha
 nd the activation of PI3K/Akt contributes to survival by inhibiting apopto
 tic pathways it produces on the other hand a reduction in the efficacy of 
 cellular components of the cognitive process by inhibiting glutamate recep
 tor endocytosis and thus LTD. These results indicate that cognitive loss w
 ith age is the price we pay for our neurons to stay alive.\n 
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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