Lessons From a Crab: Molecular Mechanisms in Different Memory Phases of Chasmagnathus

ARTURO ROMANO; FERNANDO LOCATELLI; RAMIRO FREUDENTHAL; EMILIANO MERLO; MARIANA FELD; PABLO ARIEL; DARÍO LEMOS; NOEL FEDERMAN; MARIA SOL FUSTIÑANA

BIOLOGICAL BULLETIN

Año: 2006 vol. 210 p. 280 - 288

0006-3185

Consolidation of long-term memory requires the activation of several transduction pathways that lead to post-translational modifications of synaptic proteins and to regulation of gene expression, both of which promote stabilization of specific changes in the activated circuits. In search of the molecular mechanisms involved in such processes, we used the context-signal associative learning paradigm of the crab Chasmagnathus. In this model, we studied the role of some molecular mechanisms, namely cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA), extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK), the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-B) transcription factor, and the role of synaptic proteins such as amyloid ß precursor protein, with the object of describing key mechanisms involved in memory processing. In this article we review the most salient results obtained over a decade of research in this memory model.