Genes control how information is duplicated in the nervous system
A new King’s College London study, published in eLife, reveals that genes control the duplication of information in the nervous system and identifies some of the first genes that perform this crucial function.
Prior studies suggest that information about the environment, such as vision, can be duplicated in multiple places in the nervous system, comparable to a computer backup. This feature is fundamental to how information is encoded and transmitted in the brain. However, little is known about how the choice to duplicate information is made in the nervous system. Insights into this question have implications for nearly all aspects of brain function in health and disease.
This multidisciplinary work involved biologists and a physicist from the Centre of Developmental Neurobiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology &Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London, and engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA).
This research builds on previous efforts by the team to study the production of neuronal hormones, which change in response to food, to mediate the effects of food on lifespan. By studying the patterns of hormone production in different nerve cells in a roundworm known as C. elegans, the researchers found that the information about food exposure is duplicated in more than one nerve cell. However, in a mutant roundworm that lacked the gene for a growth factor called TGF-beta, the pattern of food responses in these nerve cells changed, such that the information about food was no longer duplicated.
Dr QueeLim Ch’ng from King’s College London, senior author of the study, said: ‘While the concept of information is abstract, we can easily relate it to how files are stored on computers. In the normal animals, it’s like having a computer where some files are duplicated on two hard drives. What is particularly cool is that information in the nervous system is located differently when specific genes are changed, even though the anatomy stays the same. This affects the way information is transmitted and ultimately integrated to produce an effect on the whole animal.’
Dr Ch’ng added: ‘Our findings also reveal, for the first time, how genes control one another to affect how information is routed in the brain. These insights may help us further understand the relationship between genes and cognitive abilities.’
This work was supported by grants from the BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, ERC, NIH, and NSF.
Notes to editors
Paper reference: Diana, G et al (2017) Genetic Control of Encoding Strategy in a Food-sensing Neural Circuit eLife