Food related-Amino Acid ＆ Brain Function and Repair

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Mother's milk is a one of the best food. Baby can be grown up just by drinking mother's milk. This food contains the all components essential to the growth of baby. The brain development should also be supported by a certain component included in mother's milk. Taurine is an amino acid and is contained at a high concentration of 300-500 microM in human mother's milk, but at a low concentration in Cow's milk (less than 10 microM). Sturman and his colleagues conducted the general nutritional study of taurine using macaque monkeys. They stressed that there are significant disadvantages to primates fed a taurine-free formula during development (up to 12 months). Nowadays, most of infant formulae contain a large amount of this amino acid (20-35 mg/100 g dry weight). This corresponds 200-360 microM, a little lower than in human milk. People expect the positive effect of taurine on the brain development; however, no clear data have obtained. Our study is the first attempt to verify the effect of taurine on the development of mammalian cerebral cortex. We have studied the effect of taurine on the development of cerebral neocortex by using an acute brain slice from new-born mice. By means of electrophysiology, we observed that taurine opens the chloride channels on young neurons. The opening of this channel was inhibited by the application of a glycine-receptor antagonist, strychnine. These results demonstrate that taurine binds to the glycine-receptors. There are a few reports showing the opening of glycine-receptor by the application of taurine; but most studies were regarding to spinal cord's neuron. By means of immunohistochemistry, we detected the expression of glycine-receptor alpha2 subunits on young neurons at developing cerebral cortex. A RT-PCR study also showed the existence of glycine-receptor alpha2 molecules in the developing cerebral cortex.