Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

Long-term memory consolidation accompanies de novo protein synthesis in specific neurons. Although this has been known for more than half a century, the identity of proteins that are synthesized upon learning and their functions have been poorly revealed. Memory circuit in Drosophila melanogaster provides the best model system to tackle this problem, due to the genetically tractable neural circuit and accumulating knowledge about the circuit usage. Moreover, the cutting-edge molecular biology and genetic tools enable genome-wide monitoring of protein synthesis and labeling or manipulation of each protein in a cell-type specific manner. Taking advantage, I aim to reveal the molecular mechanisms how the long-term memory is encoded and stabilized in the brain.