Introducing the brain: neurotransmitters role in movement (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 10, 2022, 19:08 (807 days ago) @ David Turell

New biochemical study:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-proteins-fine-tune-movement.html

"Three members of a family of proteins have been identified that are important to helping us fine tune the activity of brain chemicals which enable us to walk or stand at will, scientists report.

"The findings point toward the proteins KCTD5, KCTD17 and KCTD2 as potential new therapeutic targets in conditions like Parkinson's and dystonia where control of movement is lost, says Dr. Brian Muntean, pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Medical College of Georgia

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"The fine tuning these KCTD family members appear to enable is called neuromodulation, which involves hundreds if not thousands of proteins inside neurons that are part of the complex pathway that precisely fine tunes the fast-moving sharing of neurotransmitters, or chemical messengers, between these brain cells so we can accomplish a desired function of our brain and body like walking across the room.

"It's the first discovery about the role these KCTD proteins play in neurons called striatal neurons, which are essential to movement and a variety of other fundamental functions.

"One of the key pathways neuromodulators use is cyclic AMP, or cAMP, which is called a "second messenger" because it's a response inside a cell that occurs in response to something that happens outside a cell.

"In the case of movement, a key external influence is the neurotransmitter dopamine, known to be important to controlled movement and known to be deficient in Parkinson's. As a neurotransmitter, dopamine works by interacting with a receptor on the surface of neurons, which triggers a lot of activity inside the cell including triggering proteins, which they now know include these three members of the KCTD family. In this complex scenario, dopamine also functions as a neuromodulator by helping regulate cAMP levels inside neurons.

"The scientists have found that these three KCTD proteins are doing at least two things simultaneously to modulate the fast work of neurotransmitters.

"They are helping regulate the way dopamine is making cAMP both by interacting with the proteins that directly make it and by interacting with proteins that put zinc, which is also known to regulate cAMP, into the neurons.

"'Modulating the cAMP level is what can kind of dictate the long-term ability of these neurotransmitters to work perfectly," Muntean says.

"KCTD is a family of about two dozen proteins, which scientists have begun to realize are involved in this complicated pathway of regulating the regulators, by binding to some of the proteins in the pathway that regulate cAMP.

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"In this scenario, the scientists found zinc appears important in the "very layered" process of modulating cAMP and that KCTD5 regulates zinc levels by controlling levels of the transporter, Zip 14, which brings zinc inside cells.

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"The KCTD gene family has 25 members, which early work indicates are involved in a myriad of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia. It's known that some patients with dystonia have a mutation in KCTD17 and variations in the gene that makes Zip-14 have recently been implicated in Parkinson's and dystonia, the authors write."

Comment: a very intricate control system which is so carefully balanced, it has to have been designed.