Old dogs with new tricks.

Our latest paper in Neuron came out recently. George Augustine's lab used photolysis of the caged calcium I developed several years ago (DMNPE-4) to induce LTD in Purkinje neurons. What is so nice about this study is that George also collaborated with Mitsuo Kawato's group in Kyoto. The Japanese group had developed a model of positive feedback which could account for the quantitative relationship between calcium concentration, time and the % LTD. In the grand tradition of Hodgkin & Huxley, the model could then be used to predict how LTD would change if one of the enzymes in the feedback loop was inhibited. On the basis of this prediction, Keiko Tanaka did more calcium uncaging, and lo-and-behold, the new data fitted the prediction!!

K. Tanaka, L. Khiroug, F. Santamaria, T. Doi, H. Ogasawara, G.C.R. Ellis-Davies, M. Kawato; G.J. Augustine. “Ca requirements for cerebellar long-term synaptic depression: role for a postsynaptic leaky integrator.” Neuron 2007, 54, 787-800.

G.C.R. Ellis-Davies and R.J. Barsotti “Tuning caged calcium: photolabile analogues of EGTA with improved optical and chelation properties.” Cell Calcium 2006, 35, 75-83.

G.C.R. Ellis-Davies, "Synthesis of Photolabile EGTA Derivatives" Tetrahedron Lett. 1998, 39, 953-6.