Stowers assistant investigator Kausik Si, Ph.D., admits he’s had
some “crazy ideas”. Si, a neurobiologist, uses fruit flies to
study the biochemical basis of long-term memory. That is not the
“crazy idea”: memory is based on a series of biochemical events
that induce changes in the connection points or synapses between
neurons and the fruit fly is a perfectly good system to model
that in. A neuron (shown in red) in the hippocampus, the brain's
learning and memory center, expresses CPEB3, a protein with
prion-like properties. Image: Courtesy of Dr. Kausik Si. What’s
“crazy” is the kind of biochemical change that has pre-occupied
Si since he was a postdoc at Columbia University with Nobel
laureate Eric Kandel. There, in 2003 in back-to-back Cell papers
Si reported that a protein required for the formation of stable,
long-term memory resembled the dreaded prion particle. Real
prions—their name a creepy combo of “protein” and
“infection”—are infectious protein particles that when ingested
cause encephalopathies.