Séminaire PMMH – Olga Dudko (University of California at San Diego)

Specificity and universality in neuronal communication.

Our ability to feel, think, or act is determined by the capacity of our neurons to communicate rapidly and precisely. Even though we have a theory that describes the propagation of signals along a single neuron (the Hodgkin–Huxley work leading to ion channels), there was no comparably compelling theory for the transmission of signals across the synapses between neurons, despite a rich body of quantitative data. I will discuss how we might be able to go from the molecular constituents of synapses all the way to the phenomenology of synaptic transmission and further to memory and learning, in one coherent theory. While rates of neurotransmitter release in different synapses span nearly ten orders of magnitude, the dependence of these rates on the underlying control signal is found to obey a simple, universal scaling law. The physical principles embodied in this scaling connect to processes across the traditional subfields of biology – from neuronal communication to viral infection, fertilization of the egg, and the growth of our muscles. These commonalities suggest the possibility of a unifying theory.