| Budget Amount *help |
¥15,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥15,100,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥5,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,800,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥9,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥9,300,000)
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| Research Abstract |
How learning and memory are controlled at neural circuit level is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Neural circuit for learning and memory is however enormously complicated in higher animals for molecular and cellular dissection. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is well suited to behavioral genetic approach to dissect molecular mechanism of learning and memory because of its accessibility to genetics, its stereotyped behavioral responses and the ease to control experimental conditions in the laboratory. C.elegans is also ideal to study cellular base of learning and memory because of its complete anatomical knowledge of the nervous system consisting of 302 identifiable neurons with all neuronal connections known. C.elegans can respond to various environmental cues, such as taste, smell, touch and temperature to ensure its own survival and reproduction in the natural environment. In addition to these primary behavioral responses, neural plasticity, learning and memory can be observed in C.elegans despite of its simple nervous system. Recently, various studies aiming to understand these complex mechanisms have been carried out on olfactory adaptation, non-associative learning in mechanical tap response, and locomotory rate modulated by feeding state. In the Project performed in Institute for Advanced Research, thermotaxis behavior was utilized to molecular, cellular and physiological dissection of learning and memory.
1. Genetic control of temperature preference in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans
2. Molecular physiology of the neural circuit for calcineurin and octopamine dependent associative learning in C.elegans
3. Insulin-like signaling and the neural circuit for associative learning in C.elegans
4. Inositol Monophosphatase maintains synapses and behavior in the mature nervous system of C.elegans
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