Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

What you’ll be able to do

• Identify the major anatomical parts of a neuron and summarize their functions

• Name the major classes of voltage-gated ion channels responsible for the resting potential and action potential. Describe their functional roles in generating those potentials, with respect to concepts such as voltage-dependence, activation, inactivation and propagation. Identify the structural motifs in these proteins that permit their function

• Summarize the sequence of events in the presynaptic terminal that lead from depolarization to neurotransmitter release, including the role of calcium. Explain the quantal hypothesis of neurotransmitter release and the experimental evidence that supports it. Describe the exocytosis/endocytosis cycle

• Summarize basic principles of ligand/receptor interactions. Interpret the meaning of quantities such as the dissociation constant (Kd) and the maximum response (Vmax). Explain the experimental evidence that led to the equations (e.g., Hill Equation) that describe these principles

• Name the major classes of ligand-gated ion channels that support fast synaptic transmission and differentiate their functions with respect to excitation versus inhibition. Identify the structural motifs in these proteins that permit their specific functions. Solve equations that describe the behavior of simple chemical and electrical systems as a function of time

• Explain what second messengers and signaling cascades are and how they participate in regulating neuronal function. Describe the major processes leading from DNA to RNA to the production of proteins and explain how these processes are regulated with respect to the structure of chromatin and the action of transcriptional activators and repressors

• Define the concept of sensory transduction. Describe the key components of transduction and their interactions in the following systems: vision, olfaction, touch and hearing. Explain how sensory cells can be "tuned" to respond to specific aspects of a stimulus (e.g., color, frequency, etc)

• Summarize key concepts, methods and results from primary research articles. Integrate information from these articles to explain how authors reached their conclusions. Judge the strengths and limitations of the methods, the data and the conclusions

• Discuss strengths and limitations of existing experimental methods, to address currently open questions in neuroscience. Propose novel approaches, that may overcome existing limitations, to address currently open questions

• Synthesize concepts from different parts of the course into a cohesive integration of cellular and molecular neural function and communication. One example would be being able to list numerous points of failure in DNA, transcription, translation or postranslational modification of several different proteins that would all converge to produce similar or identical disease phenotypes

Source: UW Guide 1· UW Guide 2