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The chemical biology of synapses and neuronal circuits

Excitatory synapses are located in confined chemical spaces called the dendritic spines. These are atypical femtoliter-order microdomains where the behavior of even single molecules may have important biological consequences. Powerful chemical biological techniques have now been developed to decipher the dynamic stability of the synapses and to further interrogate the complex properties of neuronal circuits.

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Figure 1: Dendritic spines are highly atypical chemical reaction spaces at the boundary between mass and stochastic reaction schemes.
Figure 2: Going inside the spines and exploring synaptic proteins that support the function of individual synapses.
Figure 3: Deconstructing and reconstructing cognition.

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Acknowledgements

This commentary is based on past and ongoing works that received support from grants-in-aid from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, a Global Center of Excellence program “Comprehensive Center for Education and Research of the Chemical Biology of Disease” and awards from the Astellas Foundation for Research on Metabolic Disorders, the Cell Science Foundation, the Takeda Science Foundation and the Toray Science Foundation. The author thanks H. Okuno, S. Takemoto-Kimura and H. Fujii for critical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Bito, H. The chemical biology of synapses and neuronal circuits. Nat Chem Biol 6, 560–563 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.408

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