Pioneering Neuroscience - Volume 12, 2011
It is my pleasure to present the twelfth volume of Pioneering Neuroscience: The Grinnell Journal of Neurophysiology. The articles collected in this volume represent original contributions to the field of Neuroscience offered by students in the eleventh offering of Biology 150: Introduction to Biological Inquiry - the Language of Neurons. As has been true for ten previous classes of Bio 150, this course was taken by most of the students during their first semester in college. For all of the students, this was their first college-level biology course!
This year we tried something a little different from previous years. All of the research projects examined the role of the peptide N-acetylaspartylglutamate, or NAAG, at the crayfish neuromuscular junction. NAAG has been touted as the most abundant peptide neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS). Because of its ubiquity in the CNS, it has been implicated in numerous neurological problems, including amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), diabetic neuropathy, pain, CNS injury, and schizophrenia. NAAG appears to work primarily as a co-transmitter, released along with several smaller neurotransmitters such as glutamate, GABA and acetylcholine. Following its release, NAAG alters the ongoing activity at the synapse by interacting with what have been traditionally considered glutamate receptors.
Despite the large amount of research that has been carried out trying to understand its distribution and function in mammals, relatively little exploration has been done in non-mammals. In particular, virtually nothing is known about the role of NAAG in crayfish. Other than a study carried out ten years ago that showed NAAG was released from crayfish nerve fibers and was probably involved in axon-to-glia signaling (Gafurov et al., 2001, Neuroscience 106, 227-235), no one has asked whether NAAG functions at synapses in invertebrate animals, as it does in mammals. This year’s class of Bio 150 students decided we would wait no longer to find out. After reading about what NAAG does at synapses in mammals, each group of three students choose a specific question designed to learn something about the role of NAAG at the crayfish neuromuscular junction. Of course, all of this was done using the wonderful model system of the crayfish neuromuscular junction. I hope you enjoy this volume and trust you will be as impressed as I am with what these students have accomplished in such a short time.
I wish to thank the students of Biology 150 for their hard work and collegiality. None of this would have been possible without the major contributions of Sue Kolbe and Ashley Millet, the lab instructors for Biology 150, and the excellent mentor/lab assistant Chris Kaiser-Nyman ‘13. Lastly, I am pleased to acknowledge Helen Carey ’04, who contributed the cover illustration.
Clark Lindgren, Editor December, 2011 Grinnell, Iowa
Pioneering Neuroscience - Volume 12
- Complete Issue
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
- ATHENA CARLSON, MEREDITH KALKBRENNER, and SHANICE WEBSTER, An Immunofluorescence Study of N-Acetylaspartylglutamate (NAAG) Localization at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- COLIN FRY, AARTI KOLLURI, and NIKKI SCHERRER, N-Acetylaspartylglutamate and Glutamate Carboxypetidase II are Present at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- ALISON BAYLY, JENNIFER FULTON, and CHARIS RUSSELL, NAAG Increases Synaptic Transmission at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- ABBY STEVENS, NATALIA NAKAIDZE, and MARTIN ESTRADA, Exogenous NAAG Decreases the Excitatory Post-Synaptic Response at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- HANNAH CHEN, MICHELLE KIM, and KATIE SCHLASNER, The Role of NAAG as a Possible Postsynaptic Modulator at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- WILL ELSAS, CHRISTI PETERSON, and SAM ROSEN, Metabotropic Glutamate Receptors do not Impact Post-Tetanic Plasticity at the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- ZEV BRAUN, JAMES KENT, and TAGUE ZACHARY, The Contradictory Effects of N-acetylaspartylglutamate and its Products of Hydrolysis on NMDARs in the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
- LAURIE POLISKY, HAILEY SPECK, and CHONG ZUO, Inhibition of Glutamate Carboxypeptidase II Regulates Synaptic Transmission in the Crayfish Neuromuscular Junction.
