Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Semi-live Neuroscience blogging
The Australian Neuroscienc Society meeting is fantastic. I've listened to amazing presentations about the neurobiology of sleep and how an Australian lizard has helped us develop improved treatments for nerve injury. But for me the coolest presentation was on the use of scanning tunneling microscopy (where a fine probe tip is traced over a sample) to determine the structure of beta amyloid. Beta amyloid is a protein that is normally produced in the brain. For reasons that are still unclear (but may have to do with oxidative stress) in some people the beta amyloid folds up into a different shape (technically, a beta sheet configuration), which then aggregrates into a sticky mass that is toxic to nerve cells (again, for reasons that are not entirely clear but probably related to oxidative stress), and eventaully leads to memory loss and dementia.
This presentation used scanning tunnleing microscopy to probe the structure of amyloid as it went from monomer, to dimer to oligomer. The proteins form hairpin structures, which then aline end to end to made long fibrils. It was fantastic (I spend a large part of my research trying to kill nevre cells with toxic amyloids, my students probably say my lectures do the same thing more cheaply)!
What is even more mindblowing than seeing effectively protein stucture in real time (without long tedious x-ray crystallography), was that this picture is constructed by electrons "tunneling" around the space between the microscope probe tip and the protein. Quantum weirdness is being used to probe the causes of a disease that too often strikes our parents or grandparents, and ultimately may help us to tear these toxic tangels apart. I love science.
This presentation used scanning tunnleing microscopy to probe the structure of amyloid as it went from monomer, to dimer to oligomer. The proteins form hairpin structures, which then aline end to end to made long fibrils. It was fantastic (I spend a large part of my research trying to kill nevre cells with toxic amyloids, my students probably say my lectures do the same thing more cheaply)!
What is even more mindblowing than seeing effectively protein stucture in real time (without long tedious x-ray crystallography), was that this picture is constructed by electrons "tunneling" around the space between the microscope probe tip and the protein. Quantum weirdness is being used to probe the causes of a disease that too often strikes our parents or grandparents, and ultimately may help us to tear these toxic tangels apart. I love science.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:48 pm 
Comments:
<< Home
Right on. There is beauty in art & music, but there is beauty in science and in the way the universe works also. And it is all the more special since it is transcends the man-made.
Post a Comment
<< Home
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
