Download Exam from this module from 2005
Yin et al Cell 81:107, 1995
This is a fairly easy paper - go through it thoroughly
I like this paper as an example of one molecule doing miracles.
Note the statement about photographic memory.
Also, fly behavior is not familiar to everyone.
In reading a paper thoroughly, you should try to know how everything was done
and how to interpret each figure.
This takes a lot of time if you are not familiar with the system and methods.
Try to do it for this paper.
It may require you to look up previous work, etc. Let's discuss this paper
completely.
On the other hand, many times you want to get the gist of what is
being done or what has been concluded.
This is not reading critically and you may end up being somewhat skeptical
of the conclusions.
To alleviate, or support, your skepticism you would need to do a much more
thorough reading and to delve
into the background literature. For the following papers, let's just try a
more rapid approach and discuss
what we feel might need to be answered to really believe all these conclusions.
The advantage of this
approach is that you can cover much more material. The disadvantage is
that you may be deceived or
misunderstand what has been done.
Before you read these papers (especially the first one), read pp 281-285 (the
section on cognitive kinases)
in the text (Fundamental Neuroscience). Pay particular attention to the
paragraph on Protein Kinase C
that begins at the bottom of page 283. Understand the mechanism presented
in the book for the
conversion of PKC to PKM. Then read Hernandez.
Hernandez et al.
J Biol Chem 278:40305, 2003
This is a complex and interesting paper, but has a single point you should
get:
1. PKMzeta is generated de novo on stimulation and not by proteolysis of
PKCzeta as was formerly thought.
Thus, don't spend a lot of time on this unless you are interested to see how
they did it.
Read the abstract and the introduction and look at the model in the last figure
(7).
Also read the last section of the discussion (last 3 paragraphs).
Pastalkova et al. Science 313:1141, 2006
This paper makes the point that continued activation (for 24 HOURS) of
PKMzeta is required
to maintain LTP and spatial memory.
Read the abstract and look at Figs 1 and 2 and their legends.
Shema et
al. Science 317:951, 2007
This paper makes the same point as the one above, but says that PKMzeta
activity is required for 25 DAYS after learning.
Read the abstract and look at Figure 1 and its legend.
The data in this paper suggests that you better not do anything that would
inhibit PKMzeta ever! Or your memories will ALL be gone!
Could we test this?
What is the molecular substrate for memory? Are there biochemical and/or
structural changes we can measure and
associate with memory?
For helping you to understand G protein coupled signal transduction
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To read and discuss
Aizawa et al Science 303:197, 2004
West et al. Nat Rev Neurosci 3:921, 2002
Chen et al Science 302:885, 2003