Date: Monday 30 September 2024
Time: 12:00 - 13:00
Location:
Lecture Theatre 3,
View map
About the event
Join us for the next Cell Biology & Genetics External seminar: "Mitochondria at neuronal presynapses in health and disease" by Dr Mike Divine.
The nervous system enables organisms to respond to stimuli in a rapid and coordinated manner. However, nervous systems are expensive: the human brain comprises just 2% of the body's mass, but utilises 20% of the body's energy.
This energy is needed to maintain membrane polarisation and to power synapses, where neurons communicate with each other. In order to process information, synaptic activity varies from one moment to another.
Therefore, neuronal energy usage varies across individual neurons, and at individual synapses over time. Additionally, neurotransmitter release at synapses is triggered by a rapid influx of Ca2+ ions in response to incoming action potentials, so synapses must quickly clear Ca2+ to stop neurotransmission and prepare for future release events.
A key question in the field is how do neurons meet such spatiotemporally diverse energy and Ca2+ buffering requirements? Mitochondria are ideally suited to help, because they are a potent source of ATP (via oxidative phosphorylation) and they avidly take up local Ca2+ via the mitochondrial calcium uniporter. Crucially, they are also mobile: they move within neurons to where they are most needed.
They frequently localise to presynapses where they support sustained synaptic transmission via provision of ATP. But presynaptic mitochondria can also lower neurotransmission via buffering local Ca2+.
So mitochondria play a dual role in shaping synaptic activity, which has potentially far reaching implications for diseases featuring a mismatch between energy demand and supply (such as stroke and epilepsy), as well as neurodegenerative diseases.
The goal of the lab is to unpick the molecular mechanisms by which mitochondria regulate neuronal activity and govern synaptic transmission, and how these roles changes in neurological and psychiatric disease, with the aim of opening up new therapeutic avenues for these disorders.