electrotonic signals along intracellular membranes may interconnect dendritic spines and nucleus电紧张电位信号在细胞内的膜可能互连树突棘细胞核.pdfVIP

Electrotonic Signals along Intracellular Membranes May Interconnect Dendritic Spines and Nucleus 1 ¨ 2,3,4 ´ 2,3,4 1 Isaac Shemer *, Bjorn Brinne , Jesper Tegner , Sten Grillner 1 Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2 Division of Computational Biology, Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, The ¨ ¨ Institute of Technology, Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden, 3 The Computational Medicine Group, Center for Molecular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, 4 Unit of Computational Medicine, Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Abstract Synapses on dendritic spines of pyramidal neurons show a remarkable ability to induce phosphorylation of transcription factors at the nuclear level with a short latency, incompatible with a diffusion process from the dendritic spines to the nucleus. To account for these findings, we formulated a novel extension of the classical cable theory by considering the fact that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an effective charge separator, forming an intrinsic compartment that extends from the spine to the nuclear membrane. We use realistic parameters to show that an electrotonic signal may be transmitted along the ER from the dendritic spines to the nucleus. We found that this type of signal transduction can additionally account for the remarkable ability of the cell nucleus to differentiate between depolarizing synaptic signals that originate from the dendritic spines and back-propagating