Analysis of novel actin filament binding protein on the synaptic biology and autism.

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26670089
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: General anatomy (including histology/embryology)
• Research Institution: University of Fukui
• Principal Investigator: Kuroda Kazuki 福井大学, 医学部, 助教 (60557966)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): Sato Makoto 大阪大学, 連合小児発達学研究科, 教授 (10222019) ; Yagi Hideshi 兵庫医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (10303372) ; Xie Min-Jue 福井大学, 医学部, 助教 (40444210)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: myosin / actin / spine / hippocampus

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Non-muscle myosin IIb plays a major role for regulation of actin dynamics in the dendritic spines. However, how myosin IIb directly alters cytoskeletal dynamics through ATPase-driven contraction of actin networks and how myosin IIb function is regulated during the spine maturation are still poorly understood. We found that FRM was a binding partner of myosin IIb and was expressed in the hippocampal and neocortical neurons. We next examined the effects of altered endogenous FRM expression in cultured hippocampal neurons, the knockdown of FRM expression induced the spine length shortening and changed the ratio of cell surface and total expressing NMDA receptor. Recently, we generated FRM conditional knockout mice for understanding of the roles of FRM in the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex. When FRM conditional knockout mice crossed with Emx1-Cre mice, these FRM mutant mice showed the anxiety-like behavior compared with the control mice.

Free Research Field

Neuroscience