Imagine that, as is usually the case in the archipelago, the light goes at home. But he is not worried, because he has other energy sources – batteries, generators or solar panels – that maintain the essential working. The same goes for a hybrid car; Use different fuels to propel yourself.
Something similar happens in the brain, according to a new study of the Yale Universitywhich discovered that neurons – which allow us to think, feel, move, learn, remember and react – have their own “emergency battery” in the form of glycogen or glycogen, a type of sugar stored, explained the Puerto Rican scientist Daniel Colón Ramoscorrespondent author of the research and professor of neuroscience and cell biology at Yale School of Medicine.
“We found that, contrary to what was thought, neurons have other fuel that they also use, which is called glygen. Glycogen, which is actually a chain of sugars, and that sugar chain works as if it were a battery, as a reserve,” said telephone to telephone The new day. “The way in which glycogen works is equivalent to the battery of a solar plate, Where you store energy and, when you are in a situation of energy stress, you can then use the battery to be able to give energy to the rest of the house”
In summary, when the main energy of neurons fails, these reserves are activated so that neurons continue to work, even, in times of great energy stress, according to the findings, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pnas).
According to Yale researchers, this mechanism is vital, since it allows neurons to maintain their communication – through synaptic vesicles – even in situations of great energy stress. Without this support battery, the connection between neurons – and with that the thought, reflexes and memory – could be affected.
“The predominant thought in the field was that glycogen was not being used by neurons, but those energy stores were in other cells called glial cells”he added. “The concept of glycogen as drums, as a reserve of energy, was known, but was known for other cells, such as muscles. (…) Those energy reserves are those that allow athletes, for example, running bicycle for long distances, because sugar goes fast, and then what they have left are these batteries working.”
Columbus Ramos recalled that “the brain works for the energy it has.” “If you do not have energy, because that is the difference between a dead brain and a living brain,” he emphasized. In that sense, the new study It could help develop ways to protect the brain in conditions such as cerebral spills, epilepsy or neurodegenerative diseases, all related to energy problems in cells.
“This has important consequences, because the capacity, that is, the resilience of the brain depends on mechanisms like that. Then, if we do not understand the mechanisms that are giving resilience to the brain, of first instance in cases where these mechanisms are not working well, because we will not understand what is not working well,” said the Burious scientist.
As part of the study, Yale’s team used the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis Elegans (C. Elegans), a simple model that allows studying nervous system processes.
Colón Ramos described the transparent body – which has been at the center of several scientific discoveries that have received the Nobel Prize – as a “pioneering model” in the field of scientific research.
“This worm is a wonderful tool to be able to make this type of discovery, because we have a lot of control over the biology of the animal, we understand many of the components of biology. So, we can look with a high level of curiosity of this type of questions, that allows us to understand the questions at a level that would be almost impossible to understand it in any other system, especially in a system like an intact human being,” he said.