Experiments on transgenic mice, carried out independently by two groups of neuroscientists, showed that protein kinase M-zeta (PKM-? ), a protein also known as the " A summary of both publications that appeared on the pages of the journal Nature, reports Nature News.

The idea of \u200b\u200bscientists about the \? The introduction of this peptide into various areas of the brain, which was performed immediately before the reminder stimulus, led to the fact that the previously developed conditioned reflex disappeared in animals..

The authors of two new papers have drawn their attention to the fact that all scientific publications that have investigated the role of PKM-? were carried out using exactly the ZIP inhibitor. Then the scientists decided to reproduce a similar effect by deleting the gene for PKM itself.? from the animal genome without resorting to a peptide.

As it turned out, the removal of the " This effect could be explained by some kind of compensation - playing the role of PKM-? during development by some other protein. However, a similar lack of effect on memory was also seen in those mice in which the gene was deleted from the genome already in adulthood, when full compensation is almost impossible..

It is noteworthy that the ZIP inhibitor on the memory of transgenic mice and control animals had the same effect.. Thus, the effect of erasing memories created by it turned out to be not at all associated with the inhibition of PKM-? , as it was assumed earlier, but with the action on some still unknown targets.

In neuroscience, one of the fastest growing areas is the study of memory.. The basis of memory is long-term potentiation - an increase in the efficiency of impulse conduction in certain synapses between neurons. It should be noted that it was previously believed that the increase in the efficiency of synapses depends on PKM-?

global science. en.