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Sophistication in Our Nervous System
| Article
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10613 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1986 |
2,536 Words |
| Author
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Joseph W. Alper
Joseph w. Alper is a free-lance science writer residing in
Washington, D.C. |
The feature that most distinguishes an animal from a plant is that animals have nervous systems that enable them to process internal and external information, integrate it quickly, and act on it. At the core of the nervous system are the neurons--millions of them. An individual neuron can do little by itself but, connected with others, it becomes part of a complex data-processing system. And neuroscientists, as part of their quest to decipher the inner workings of this most animal of systems, have striven over the past fifty years to understand how nerve cells function and communicate among themselves.
The knowledge they desire lies ultimately in the molecules nerve cells use to recognize and communicate with each other. At the microscopic level, one type of nerve cell is hard to distinguish from another. At the molecular level, however, each type of neuron is unique. The neurotransmitters it responds to, the ion channels it uses to generate nerve impulses, and myriad other molecules give a neuron its individuality. This individuality is fundamental to the complexity and proper functioning of the entire nervous system.
For the most part, however, the identities of the molecules that make each nerve cell different, and, therefore, that make the nervous system so exquisitely complex in both form and function, have remained a mystery. "But in the past few years there's been a quantum leap in our ability to examine the molecular composition of nerve cells, and, thus, in our knowledge about how the nervous system functions," says Seymour Benzer of the California Institute of Technology. "This is because molecular biologists and their new tools--namely recombinant DNA and monoclonal antibodies--have been accepted as full partners in the neurosciences. There's been a tremendous cross-fertilization in the study of nervous system functioning with ideas and techniques from other areas of science."
Mapping The Genes of Mutant Flies
Some of the credit for the diversification occurring today in the neurosciences must go to Benzer, a physicist who turned to molecular genetics in 1949 and who began studying behavioral mutants of Drosophila (fruit flies) in the late 1960s. During the early years, Benzer's studies concentrated on isolating mutants and locating the positions of the relevant genes on each of the four Drosophila chromosomes, a procedure known as genetic mapping.
Drosophila are easy to grow, have a short life cycle, a full
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