Like brain cells, kidney cells can ‘remember’

Kidney cells may possibly make memories too. As a minimum, in a metaphorical sense.

Neurons have historically been the cell most related to memory. But a protracted way outside the brain, kidney cells may in all probability also store information and recognize patterns in the same method to neurons, researchers report November 7 in Nature Communications.

“We’re no longer saying that the kind of memory helps you learn trigonometry or take into account tips on how you can ride a motorbike or stores your childhood memories,” says Nikolay Kukushkin, a neuroscientist at New York University. “This research adds to the considered memory; it doesn’t challenge the present conceptions of memory in the brain.”

In experiments, the kidney cells showed signs of what’s often is named a “massed-space effect.” This well-known feature of how memory works in the brain facilitates storing information in small chunks over time, in place of an oversized chunk immediately.

Outside the brain, cells of all kinds ought to keep track of stuff. One way they are trying it truly is thru a protein central to memory processing, often is named CREB. It, and other molecular components of memory, are found in neurons and nonneuronal cells. While the cells have similar parts, the researchers weren’t sure if the parts worked the identical way.

In neurons, when a chemical signal passes through, the cell starts producing CREB. The protein then turns on more genes that in the same fashion change the cell, kick-starting the molecular memory machine (SN: 2/three/04). Kukushkin and colleagues got down to determine whether CREB in nonneuronal cells responds to incoming signals the identical way.

The researchers inserted an artificial gene into human embryonic kidney cells. This artificial gene largely matches the naturally going on stretch of DNA that CREB activates by binding to it — a region the researchers call a memory gene. The inserted gene also included instructions for producing a glowing protein found in fireflies.

The team then watched the cells respond to artificial chemical pulses that mimic the signals that trigger the memory machinery in neurons. “Counting on how a superior deal light [the glowing protein] produces, we all know the way strongly that memory gene became turned on,” Kukushkin says.

Different timing patterns of pulses resulted in different responses. When the researchers applied four, three-minute chemical pulses separated by 10 minutes, the light 24 hours later became stronger than in cells where the researchers applied a “massed” pulse, a single 12-minute pulse.

“This [massed-spaced] effect has never been seen outside a brain, it’s always been thought as this property of neurons, of a brain, how memory is formed,” Kukushkin says. “But we propose that perchance should you give nonbrain cells complicated enough tasks, they'll even be capable of form a memory.”

Neuroscientist Ashok Hegde calls the study “interesting, because they are applying what’s in most cases considered as a neuroscience principle sort of broadly to remember gene expression in nonneuronal cells.” But it’s unclear how generalizable the findings are to other different types of cells, says Hegde, of Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. Still, he says this research may in due course help with the seek potential drugs to treat human disease, particularly those where memory loss occurs.

Kukushkin has the identical opinion. The body can store information, he says, and well be meaningful to someone’s health.

“Perchance we're capable of listen on cancer cells as having memories, and take into account what they are able to learn from the pattern of chemotherapy,” Kukushkin says. “Perchance we have to have faith no longer just how a superior deal drug we're giving someone, but what is the time pattern of that drug, just as we take into account tips on how you can learn more efficiently.”