Protein partners of rapsyn that regulate acetylcholine receptor clustering

脊神经通过向与之接触的肌肉纤维表面直接释放化学信号来控制肢体肌肉。这些化学信号接触被称为突触。它们就像我们大脑中神经细胞之间的突触，但更容易研究，这意味着我们可以在理解突触如何工作方面取得更快的进展。神经到肌肉突触的化学信号感受器被一种叫做rapsyn的蛋白质固定在肌肉纤维表面。反过来，rapsyn必须由来自神经的其他化学信号组织，但我们不知道这是如何发生的。在重症肌无力等疾病中，当突触上的受体紊乱时，我们就会失去对肌肉的控制。该项目将采用最新开发的蛋白质组学和基因组学技术来识别与rapsyn结合的新蛋白质，并测试它们如何在突触上组织受体。通过识别控制rapsyn的蛋白质，我们可能能够开发出新的治疗重症肌无力的方法，这种方法可以恢复突触的功能，而且副作用比目前的治疗方法要小。

Spinal nerves control our limb muscles by releasing chemical signals directly onto the surface of muscle fibres that they contact. These chemical signalling contacts are called synapses. They are like the synapses between nerve cells in our brains but easier to study, meaning that we can make more rapid progress in understanding how synapses work. The sensor receptors for chemical signals at the nerve-to-muscle synapse are held in place on the muscle fibre surface by a protein called rapsyn. In turn, rapsyn must be organized by other chemical signals from the nerve, but we don't know exactly how this happens. When the receptors become disorganized at the synapse, in diseases such as Myasthenia Gravis, we lose control of our muscles. This project will employ newly developing techniques of proteomics and genomics to identify new proteins that bind to rapsyn and to test how they work to organize receptors at the synapse. By identifying the proteins that control rapsyn we may be able to develop new treatments for Myasthenia Gravis that restore the function of the synapse with less side effects than current therapies.