Scientists from Durham University, the University of Aberdeen and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan have concluded that a certain protein plays a role in detecting movement.
Protein linked to movement
The protein is found in nerve endings involved in mechanical senses, which are fundamentally important for the control of hearing, balance, movement and blood pressure.
A protein, ASIC3, it was recently concluded to play a role in detecting small, rapid movements after a series of tests, even though this was previously doubted by some scientists.
The protein is found in nerve endings involved in mechanical senses, which are fundamentally important for the control of hearing, balance, movement and blood pressure.
Professor Chih-Cheng Chen of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Dr Robert Banks of Durham University and Dr Guy Bewick of the University of Aberdeen, who discovered the protein, believe this discovery could eventually benefit people with movement disorders, spinal injuries, high blood pressure and even improve the design of robotics and prosthetics.
Dr Guy Bewick explained: “We know which proteins detect heat, cold, pain, light, smell and taste but we don’t really know which proteins detect movement. Movement is extremely complex. It involves detecting how far, how fast, how hard and smoothness. So it may sometimes involve groups of proteins, clustered in functional units, in the same nerve ending. We, and other groups around the world, are starting to unpick what each of the proteins found in these endings might be doing.”
Dr Bewick also explained that by identifying the role of individual proteins meant that it could be possible “to develop drugs that target and ‘turn off’ or ‘turn on’ these proteins to alleviate many disease symptoms”.
He added: “We think over-sensitive nerve endings might underlie problems in people with spinal cord injuries and cerebral palsy. Because the endings fire off too much, they set off reflex muscle contraction causing rigidity or pain. Finding selective drugs to turn them ‘down’ would prevent that reflex, without causing the weakness that current treatments produce, such as botox injections which simply paralyse muscles.”
This study builds on research Dr Bewick published last year along with Professor Tom Jessell and Dr Joriene de Nooij of Columbia University, New York, which identified the role of a protein (whirlin) as important for ‘clustering’ these nerve ending proteins together.