1 00:00:01 --> 00:00:05 Good morning. All right. So, it was a lot of fun to tell you 2 00:00:05 --> 00:00:10 last time about the work that's going on here at MIT in genomics. 3 00:00:10 --> 00:00:16 It's, it's just fun. I mean it's fun to share what's going on and 4 00:00:16 --> 00:00:21 it's fun that you guys can understand what's going on already 5 00:00:21 --> 00:00:27 with simply one semester of biology, which I think is really cool. 6 00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 What I would like to do today is talk about another exciting area, 7 00:00:30 --> 00:00:34 one I don't work in, but one that I know many people are interested in. 8 00:00:34 --> 00:00:38 And I would like to lay the foundations for neurobiology. 9 00:00:38 --> 00:00:42 Neurobiology is an incredibly interesting area. 10 00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 I confess it's the subject that got me interested in biology in the 11 00:00:45 --> 00:00:49 first place, even though I don't work on it itself. 12 00:00:49 --> 00:00:53 And, I mean, who can't be interested in the brain. 13 00:00:53 --> 00:00:57 But if you want to take on the brain, you really have to understand 14 00:00:57 --> 00:01:01 its working components in some retail detail. 15 00:01:01 --> 00:01:06 And so what we're going to focus on in this course for the next three 16 00:01:06 --> 00:01:11 lectures is the specific molecular mechanism by which nerve cells are 17 00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 able to transmit signals down their length, how they're able to transmit 18 00:01:16 --> 00:01:21 signals from one cell to the next, and then how they're able to change 19 00:01:21 --> 00:01:27 their properties over time, that is learn and remember. 20 00:01:27 --> 00:01:34 So, the fundamental unit of neurological processing is a nerve 21 00:01:34 --> 00:01:42 cell which goes by the name a neuron. You have approximately ten to the 22 00:01:42 --> 00:01:51 twelfth neurons. 23 00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 How many bases are in the human genome? 24 00:01:53 --> 00:02:00 About three times ten to the ninth. 25 00:02:00 --> 00:02:04 So, you have a lot more nerve cells than bases in the genome. 26 00:02:04 --> 00:02:08 So, it's unlikely that all of the wiring diagram is completely 27 00:02:08 --> 00:02:13 specified in the sequence of the genome simply because we have a lot 28 00:02:13 --> 00:02:17 of them here. That's just a minor side point. And what does a typical 29 00:02:17 --> 00:02:22 neuron look like? So, neurons and connections. 30 00:02:22 --> 00:02:30 So, a neuron. Well, 31 00:02:30 --> 00:02:38 a typical neuron, your ten to the twelfth neurons makes contacts with 32 00:02:38 --> 00:02:47 other neurons. It might receive contacts. 33 00:02:47 --> 00:02:56 It might get contacts from, oh, ten to the third other neurons. 34 00:02:56 --> 00:03:05 And sends signals to ten to the third other neurons. 35 00:03:05 --> 00:03:09 So, that's a lot of connections if you figure ten to the third times 36 00:03:09 --> 00:03:13 ten to the twelfth. Ten to the fifteenth connections in 37 00:03:13 --> 00:03:17 this circuit diagram. Here's sort of a, kind of a picture 38 00:03:17 --> 00:03:24 of a nerve cell -- 39 00:03:24 --> 00:03:34 -- making connections to another nerve cell. Making connections to 40 00:03:34 --> 00:03:44 maybe a muscle. 41 00:03:44 --> 00:03:48 Oh, and what activates this nerve cell? Well, maybe in your eye we 42 00:03:48 --> 00:03:54 have a photoreceptor cell. 43 00:03:54 --> 00:03:58 And that photo receptor cell will synapse upon a first neuron which 44 00:03:58 --> 00:04:02 will synapse on a second neuron which will synapse on your muscle. 45 00:04:02 --> 00:04:06 So maybe you'll see something, send a signal, send a signal, 46 00:04:06 --> 00:04:10 activate your muscle to pick it up. Needless to say, it's pretty much 47 00:04:10 --> 00:04:14 more complicated than that because it will take more than those two 48 00:04:14 --> 00:04:18 neurons to figure out this is a piece of chalk and how to coordinate 49 00:04:18 --> 00:04:22 that whole motion and all, but you get the idea. So, let's 50 00:04:22 --> 00:04:26 just take a look at some of these pieces here. What kinds of 51 00:04:26 --> 00:04:31 receptors might we have? We might have receptor neurons that 52 00:04:31 --> 00:04:43 receive light -- 53 00:04:43 --> 00:04:49 -- called photoreceptors. 54 00:04:49 --> 00:04:54 And these photoreceptors in your eye are an extraordinary piece of 55 00:04:54 --> 00:05:00 engineering. Do you know how sensitive a photoreceptor can be? 56 00:05:00 --> 00:05:05 What's the absolutely minimum possible detectable unit of light? 57 00:05:05 --> 00:05:11 One photon. It turns out your photoreceptors can, 58 00:05:11 --> 00:05:16 under appropriate circumstances, detect a single photon. Not in the 59 00:05:16 --> 00:05:22 bright right but in dark adapted conditions, you actually have on 60 00:05:22 --> 00:05:28 photon sensitivity. Very impressive. 61 00:05:28 --> 00:05:32 Under appropriate conditions, mind you. Sound receptors. You've 62 00:05:32 --> 00:05:36 got sound receptors in your ear and they are beautiful. 63 00:05:36 --> 00:05:40 We're not going to talk about them at any length, 64 00:05:40 --> 00:05:44 but there's little flappy, these little spiky things going 65 00:05:44 --> 00:05:49 along in your ear and they can translate vibrational energy coming 66 00:05:49 --> 00:05:53 from your ear, hurting your eardrum, 67 00:05:53 --> 00:05:57 being translated into a vibration into the fluid in your ear into a 68 00:05:57 --> 00:06:01 physical motion of these little receptors there into an electrical 69 00:06:01 --> 00:06:06 motion, into an electrical signal that goes into your ear. 70 00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 So, all of that, all of that's pretty impressive 71 00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 stuff. We're not going to talk about the details of it, 72 00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 but I invite some of you who want to learn more about this, 73 00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 particularly MIT students I think find receptors really quite 74 00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 remarkable kinds of devices. We're going to focus, though, 75 00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 more on this intermediate step here of a generic neuron. 76 00:06:24 --> 00:06:28 So, here's my generic neuron. And the first thing that has to be 77 00:06:28 --> 00:06:32 said is there are no generic neurons. Neurons are all very specific, 78 00:06:32 --> 00:06:37 but I'm just going to use a generic neuron for the moment. 79 00:06:37 --> 00:06:41 And the important features of a generic neuron here, 80 00:06:41 --> 00:06:45 it has these funny little processes on its cell body that are called 81 00:06:45 --> 00:06:50 dendrites. That's where it's going to receive signals. 82 00:06:50 --> 00:06:54 Processes are the name for things that stick out. 83 00:06:54 --> 00:06:59 So, these processes are called dendrites. 84 00:06:59 --> 00:07:05 Here's our nucleus of our cell. Here's our cell body. We will 85 00:07:05 --> 00:07:11 label this your cell body with a nucleus in it. 86 00:07:11 --> 00:07:17 Then we have this very long process here called an axon. 87 00:07:17 --> 00:07:23 The axon is the wire here. This region here is called the axon 88 00:07:23 --> 00:07:29 hillock and it looks like a little hill. That's what hillock means, 89 00:07:29 --> 00:07:35 it's a little sort of hill-like region here. 90 00:07:35 --> 00:07:39 And it's where all the electrical signals from the cell body are 91 00:07:39 --> 00:07:43 integrated and a, quote, decision is made about 92 00:07:43 --> 00:07:47 whether to fire. And the neuron will then fire a 93 00:07:47 --> 00:07:51 signal down the length of its axon and then it will get to the end here 94 00:07:51 --> 00:07:55 where we have these terminal processes that'll be synapsing on 95 00:07:55 --> 00:08:00 other cells here. These are called nerve terminals. 96 00:08:00 --> 00:08:04 And each will make connections either with other dendrites or maybe 97 00:08:04 --> 00:08:08 with a muscle, although you wouldn't see both of 98 00:08:08 --> 00:08:12 those occurring, so I'm just drawing this for 99 00:08:12 --> 00:08:17 illustration purposes here. And it will send a signal. And 100 00:08:17 --> 00:08:21 these points of contact are called synapses. So, 101 00:08:21 --> 00:08:25 nerve or muscle. OK? So, that's your general 102 00:08:25 --> 00:08:30 picture there. You have a synapse which transmits. 103 00:08:30 --> 00:08:35 This is an electrical signal. This is typically a chemical signal. 104 00:08:35 --> 00:08:40 And, as you might imagine, the pre-synaptic cell is this guy, 105 00:08:40 --> 00:08:46 the post-synaptic cell is that guy. So, I'll say pre-synaptic and 106 00:08:46 --> 00:08:51 post-synaptic. And what neurobiologists want to do 107 00:08:51 --> 00:08:57 is understand how does this all work? How does the initial signal impinge 108 00:08:57 --> 00:09:01 upon the dendrite from a synapse? How does that signal get collected 109 00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 and integrated into a decision about whether to fire an action potential 110 00:09:04 --> 00:09:08 that runs along the nerve? And then how does that get 111 00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 transmitted from an electrical signal back into a chemical signal 112 00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 which then restarts an electrical signal in the next cell, 113 00:09:14 --> 00:09:18 etc., etc., etc? Those are some of the kinds of questions we want to 114 00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 ask. Now, I said generic neuron. Of course there's really nothing 115 00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 generic about it. Some neurons are very tiny. 116 00:09:24 --> 00:09:28 Some neurons are very big. What's the typical size of an ordinary 117 00:09:28 --> 00:09:32 eukaryotic cell in a liver cell? Ballpark. Ten microns. 118 00:09:32 --> 00:09:37 So, a typical eukaryotic cell might be -- 119 00:09:37 --> 00:09:49 -- and ten microns. 120 00:09:49 --> 00:09:56 But a neuron can be anywhere from that size, ten microns, 121 00:09:56 --> 00:10:02 all the way up to three meters. Where's the longest neuron known? 122 00:10:02 --> 00:10:06 Squid giant axon. That's possible, actually. I'm not sure how big 123 00:10:06 --> 00:10:11 squid, I mean there are these giant squids and they may qualify. 124 00:10:11 --> 00:10:15 The longest one that I know of is in a similar sort of setting. 125 00:10:15 --> 00:10:19 It's in the giraffe. It's a motor neuron in the neck of the giraffe 126 00:10:19 --> 00:10:24 which runs three meters, a single cell. But these monstrous 127 00:10:24 --> 00:10:28 squids that, at least in stories, glom onto boats might actually get 128 00:10:28 --> 00:10:33 up there. Will somebody check the squid, 129 00:10:33 --> 00:10:37 the largest squid on record here? I might need to revise that. But 130 00:10:37 --> 00:10:41 the largest one I know about definitively is the giraffe that has 131 00:10:41 --> 00:10:45 single neurons three meters long. Ten foot long single cells. So, 132 00:10:45 --> 00:10:49 it's really very impressive what a cell can do there. 133 00:10:49 --> 00:10:53 So, I'll put down the giraffe but we'll check out on the squid there. 134 00:10:53 --> 00:10:57 Giraffe neck. OK. So, what are the kinds of questions that 135 00:10:57 --> 00:11:02 we might want to ask? Well, the kinds of questions we 136 00:11:02 --> 00:11:07 might want to ask about this process, and I'm not going to be able to 137 00:11:07 --> 00:11:12 answer all of them but I'll get them up here. So, how do receptors 138 00:11:12 --> 00:11:19 transduce signals -- 139 00:11:19 --> 00:11:26 -- from the outside world? 140 00:11:26 --> 00:11:35 Light, sounds, touch, etc. 141 00:11:35 --> 00:11:40 That's a good question. People know a lot about it. 142 00:11:40 --> 00:11:45 How do electrical signals propagate along the neuron? 143 00:11:45 --> 00:11:52 Along an axon? 144 00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 People know a lot about that one, and that's what we're going to 145 00:11:55 --> 00:12:02 discuss today. 146 00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 How do signals transmit across a synapse? 147 00:12:05 --> 00:12:12 We'll talk about that, 148 00:12:12 --> 00:12:17 some today and some next time. And how do they transmit them to 149 00:12:17 --> 00:12:22 effector cells? So how do signals transmit 150 00:12:22 --> 00:12:28 specifically to effector cells like a muscle? 151 00:12:28 --> 00:12:36 We'll talk about that. 152 00:12:36 --> 00:12:44 Then how does the pattern of connections -- 153 00:12:44 --> 00:12:50 -- give rise to a computation? 154 00:12:50 --> 00:12:58 That's pretty tricky. 155 00:12:58 --> 00:13:03 We'll talk just a teeny little bit about the simplest kind of 156 00:13:03 --> 00:13:08 computation, but the complex computations of recognizing that 157 00:13:08 --> 00:13:13 that's somebody's Volkswagen or that that's your grandmother or something 158 00:13:13 --> 00:13:18 are still beyond us today. But we know things in between that. 159 00:13:18 --> 00:13:23 How does this pattern of connections arise during development? 160 00:13:23 --> 00:13:28 That's a fascinating question. And a lot is known about it, but 161 00:13:28 --> 00:13:33 we're not going to talk about it in this course. 162 00:13:33 --> 00:13:40 How does this pattern of connections get modified by experience? 163 00:13:40 --> 00:13:47 That's something that we'll mention briefly on Friday that a colleague 164 00:13:47 --> 00:13:54 of mine who's very knowledgeable about this is going to give. 165 00:13:54 --> 00:14:01 And that's learning and memory. And then how does this all give 166 00:14:01 --> 00:14:12 rise to consciousness? 167 00:14:12 --> 00:14:16 And we haven't got the first clue. We have no idea. It's fascinating. 168 00:14:16 --> 00:14:20 I digress for a second. A famous biologist, J.B. 169 00:14:20 --> 00:14:24 . Haldane in the mid-century, middle of the 20th century wrote a 170 00:14:24 --> 00:14:28 final exam to be given in the year 2000 or so. And on the final exam 171 00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 he had about 20 odd questions. And if you go through the exam 172 00:14:31 --> 00:14:35 virtually all of those questions could indeed be answered by a 173 00:14:35 --> 00:14:39 student in the year 2000, except for the question that says 174 00:14:39 --> 00:14:43 consciousness arises on embryonic day 18, example. 175 00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 And we have no progress toward that particular question. 176 00:14:46 --> 00:14:50 That was one that he completely was way off in terms of being able to 177 00:14:50 --> 00:14:54 predict that we'd make any progress on. Maybe he meant it as a joke. 178 00:14:54 --> 00:14:58 Anyway. So, let's now dive into the specifics. 179 00:14:58 --> 00:15:04 So, electrical signals in axons. Here is an axon. We're going to 180 00:15:04 --> 00:15:10 give a very close up view. Here's the lipid bilayer. I'm just 181 00:15:10 --> 00:15:16 going to take a cross-sectional view of my axon here. 182 00:15:16 --> 00:15:22 That's the lipid bilayer. It turns out if I stick an 183 00:15:22 --> 00:15:28 electrode into an axon and I measure the voltage gradient from the 184 00:15:28 --> 00:15:34 outside of the cell to the inside of the cell, what I'm going to find is 185 00:15:34 --> 00:15:40 that the inside of the cell is negative compared to the 186 00:15:40 --> 00:15:45 outside of the cell. There is an electrical potential 187 00:15:45 --> 00:15:50 across the plasma membrane of this axon. This plasma membrane you 188 00:15:50 --> 00:15:55 remember, you know, you all remember about this. 189 00:15:55 --> 00:16:00 This is, what, three nanometers wide. There's an electrical 190 00:16:00 --> 00:16:05 membrane, electrical potential across this equal to about 191 00:16:05 --> 00:16:14 minus 70 millivolts. 192 00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 Now, come on, minus 70 millivolts is pretty trivial, 193 00:16:17 --> 00:16:21 right? You go to the store, you buy a battery, what has it, 194 00:16:21 --> 00:16:24 what's it got like one and a half volts or something? 195 00:16:24 --> 00:16:28 It's minus 70 millivolts like who cares, right? Except it's minus 70 196 00:16:28 --> 00:16:34 millivolts across three nanometers. What's the electrical field of minus 197 00:16:34 --> 00:16:44 70 millivolts across the incredibly tiny distance of three nanometers? 198 00:16:44 --> 00:16:53 Well, the electrical field strength minus 70 millivolts over three 199 00:16:53 --> 00:17:03 nanometers is about 200, 00 volts per centimeter. 200 00:17:03 --> 00:17:08 That's a very impressive number, 200,000 volts per centimeter. 201 00:17:08 --> 00:17:13 Suppose I could arrange to change the electrical potential of a cell 202 00:17:13 --> 00:17:18 from minus 70 millivolts inside to, I don't know, minus 70 millivolts 203 00:17:18 --> 00:17:24 outside. That would be a swing of 400,000 volts per centimeter. 204 00:17:24 --> 00:17:29 Do you think that a protein which had an alpha helix that had a dipole 205 00:17:29 --> 00:17:35 moment on it could feel a change of 400,000 volts per centimeter? 206 00:17:35 --> 00:17:39 You bet. Some alpha helix that had some dipole moment on it would swing 207 00:17:39 --> 00:17:44 wildly in the presence of a change of 400,000 volts per centimeter. 208 00:17:44 --> 00:17:48 That's the key to how things work down there is this tiny little minus 209 00:17:48 --> 00:17:53 70 millivolts. It's a huge potential gradient. 210 00:17:53 --> 00:17:57 And if we can change that we can swing the shapes of proteins 211 00:17:57 --> 00:18:02 quite dramatically. OK? That's the principle. 212 00:18:02 --> 00:18:08 Now, it turns out that if you take this electrode and use it to change 213 00:18:08 --> 00:18:14 the electrical gradient, what you will get is the following 214 00:18:14 --> 00:18:19 bizarre and fascinating behavior. So, take my axon here, I use this, 215 00:18:19 --> 00:18:25 and what I do is I start off, here's zero, at minus 70, 216 00:18:25 --> 00:18:31 minus 70, this is the electrical potential. 217 00:18:31 --> 00:18:41 If I use the electrode to change this to about minus 50 or so then 218 00:18:41 --> 00:18:51 all by itself, with no further input on our part, 219 00:18:51 --> 00:19:01 the cell wildly shoots up to plus 50 before rapidly coming back down and 220 00:19:01 --> 00:19:09 reestablishing itself at minus 70. So, this depolarization slightly 221 00:19:09 --> 00:19:15 shifting it away from being as polar as it is, it has a polarity of minus 222 00:19:15 --> 00:19:21 70, if we depolarize it, make it less polar, make it less 223 00:19:21 --> 00:19:28 negative, all by itself the cell executes something called an action 224 00:19:28 --> 00:19:34 potential. This action potential involves rapidly changing to being 225 00:19:34 --> 00:19:41 positive inside the cell instead of negative and then restoring itself. 226 00:19:41 --> 00:19:45 And, as you would imagine, this massive change in the field has 227 00:19:45 --> 00:19:50 a huge effect on proteins in the membrane. This is called 228 00:19:50 --> 00:19:54 depolarization phase. Not shockingly this is the 229 00:19:54 --> 00:19:59 repolarization that occurs there afterwards. So, 230 00:19:59 --> 00:20:04 it goes from minus 70 millivolts up to about plus 50 millivolts there. 231 00:20:04 --> 00:20:09 All right. How does this happen? That's my job to explain right now. 232 00:20:09 --> 00:20:14 Well, the way this happens, what kind of a beautiful piece of 233 00:20:14 --> 00:20:19 engineering explains this? Well, the first thing you need to 234 00:20:19 --> 00:20:24 know is that there are some concentration gradients set up in 235 00:20:24 --> 00:20:29 the cell. So, the concentration gradients in the 236 00:20:29 --> 00:20:35 cell are as follows. There are certain ions, 237 00:20:35 --> 00:20:42 sodium. Sodium happens to be low inside the cell and high outside the 238 00:20:42 --> 00:20:49 cell. The concentration of sodium inside the cell is about 12 239 00:20:49 --> 00:20:56 millimolar. Whereas, outside the cell is about 145 240 00:20:56 --> 00:21:04 millimolar. By contrast, potassium ions are high 241 00:21:04 --> 00:21:12 inside the cell, 139 millimolar. Whereas, 242 00:21:12 --> 00:21:20 only four millimolar on the outside of the cell. Calcium ions also have 243 00:21:20 --> 00:21:28 a gradient across the cell. They are virtually rare. 244 00:21:28 --> 00:21:33 0.1 micro, not milli, micromolar inside the cell and 2. 245 00:21:33 --> 00:21:38 millimolar outside the cell. So there are very big differences in 246 00:21:38 --> 00:21:43 the concentrations. Let me try to write these 247 00:21:43 --> 00:21:48 concentration gradients. If this is the outside and this is 248 00:21:48 --> 00:21:53 the inside, sodium has a concentration gradient higher on the 249 00:21:53 --> 00:21:58 outside than the inside. Potassium has a concentration 250 00:21:58 --> 00:22:03 gradient that's higher on the inside than the outside. 251 00:22:03 --> 00:22:07 Calcium has a concentration gradient higher on the outside than the 252 00:22:07 --> 00:22:12 inside. This turns out to be the force that drives this action 253 00:22:12 --> 00:22:17 potential, is that energy has been stored up in these concentration 254 00:22:17 --> 00:22:22 gradients. A concentration gradient is a form of energy. 255 00:22:22 --> 00:22:27 Why is that? Well, if there was no membrane there, 256 00:22:27 --> 00:22:32 what would be the concentration on the inside and the outside? 257 00:22:32 --> 00:22:35 The same. There wouldn't be an inside and outside but, 258 00:22:35 --> 00:22:38 you know, so let's imagine. Suppose I just drilled holes in the 259 00:22:38 --> 00:22:41 membrane. I get in there vrm, vrm, vrm, drill a lot of holes, 260 00:22:41 --> 00:22:45 it will equilibrate and, you know, because just by diffusion there, 261 00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 we'll go to the entropy, you know, entropy will set in and it 262 00:22:48 --> 00:22:51 will be equal concentrations. If I want to establish a 263 00:22:51 --> 00:22:54 concentration gradient then, I have to work against entropy. 264 00:22:54 --> 00:22:58 That takes energy here. And that is a form of energy then. 265 00:22:58 --> 00:23:04 I had to put work into moving ions around in order to establish a 266 00:23:04 --> 00:23:10 concentration gradient. Well, who's in charge of carrying 267 00:23:10 --> 00:23:16 out that work? Who is it that sets up these 268 00:23:16 --> 00:23:22 concentration gradients in the cell? Membrane proteins. Certain 269 00:23:22 --> 00:23:28 membrane proteins. In particular, membrane 270 00:23:28 --> 00:23:34 transporters are involved. So, we're going to talk about 271 00:23:34 --> 00:23:40 transporters and then we'll talk about some channels. 272 00:23:40 --> 00:23:51 All right. The first one. 273 00:23:51 --> 00:24:04 There is an ATP-driven sodium potassium pump. 274 00:24:04 --> 00:24:12 Any ideas what an ATP-driven sodium 275 00:24:12 --> 00:24:18 potassium pump does? It sets up, how does it set up a 276 00:24:18 --> 00:24:24 concentration gradient? So, what does it pump? It pumps a 277 00:24:24 --> 00:24:29 sodium. Does it pump a sodium in or out? 278 00:24:29 --> 00:24:33 It pumps a sodium out. It pumps potassium in. And it does it as an 279 00:24:33 --> 00:24:37 even exchange. Why would it like to do it as an 280 00:24:37 --> 00:24:41 even exchange, one sodium for one potassium? 281 00:24:41 --> 00:24:46 Charge conservation, exactly. So, there's no electrical work to 282 00:24:46 --> 00:24:50 be done if it swaps them one for one. And is there work, 283 00:24:50 --> 00:24:54 though, to be done? Yes, there is, because if I'm going to 284 00:24:54 --> 00:24:58 pump sodium out of the cell, I'm doing it against the 285 00:24:58 --> 00:25:03 concentration gradient. Or at least once I get going I'm 286 00:25:03 --> 00:25:07 doing it against a concentration gradient. So, 287 00:25:07 --> 00:25:11 energy is needed to move a sodium out of the cell against its 288 00:25:11 --> 00:25:15 concentration gradient. Energy is also needed to move a 289 00:25:15 --> 00:25:19 potassium into the cell against its concentration gradient. 290 00:25:19 --> 00:25:23 And where do we get the energy? ATP. So, an ATP is burned in order 291 00:25:23 --> 00:25:29 to do that. This guy gets called an anti-porter 292 00:25:29 --> 00:25:36 sometimes because it's an anti-transporter or something like 293 00:25:36 --> 00:25:43 that. OK. The pump then is ATPA as it uses the energy from an ATP to 294 00:25:43 --> 00:25:50 exchange this. Good. Next. There is an 295 00:25:50 --> 00:25:57 ATP-driven calcium pump or transporter. 296 00:25:57 --> 00:26:05 And, as you might imagine, what does it do? It transports a 297 00:26:05 --> 00:26:13 calcium ion out of the cell, and it happens not to do that in 298 00:26:13 --> 00:26:21 exchange for any other ion. And it, too, is driven by ATP. 299 00:26:21 --> 00:26:30 So, we go pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, keep going. 300 00:26:30 --> 00:26:35 Will this thing be able to keep going forever, 301 00:26:35 --> 00:26:40 set up arbitrarily large concentration gradients? Why not? 302 00:26:40 --> 00:26:46 Well, what is nothing leaked back in? 303 00:26:46 --> 00:26:49 Could we, could we keep going? It gets harder and harder to put 304 00:26:49 --> 00:26:53 stuff out because you're working up against a bigger and bigger 305 00:26:53 --> 00:26:56 concentration gradient. And the ATP is only going to give 306 00:26:56 --> 00:26:59 you so much energy. So, at a certain point, 307 00:26:59 --> 00:27:03 the burning of that ATP or however many ATPs it uses for its specific 308 00:27:03 --> 00:27:06 mechanism won't suffice. So, there's going to be some natural 309 00:27:06 --> 00:27:09 upper bound to how far it could go in setting up a gradient because 310 00:27:09 --> 00:27:12 there's a nature amount of energy it can spend. OK. 311 00:27:12 --> 00:27:15 It's useful to think about these gradients as, you know, 312 00:27:15 --> 00:27:19 work that you've got to do and the hill gets steeper and steeper. 313 00:27:19 --> 00:27:22 All right. So that could, in principle, set the electrical 314 00:27:22 --> 00:27:25 gradient, the concentration change across the cell. 315 00:27:25 --> 00:27:28 But there's one other important component that we have 316 00:27:28 --> 00:27:34 to think about. And that is something called a 317 00:27:34 --> 00:27:42 resting potassium channel. So, what is a resting potassium 318 00:27:42 --> 00:27:51 channel? The resting potassium channel is a protein that sits in 319 00:27:51 --> 00:28:00 the membrane and it's got a hole in it, a pore. 320 00:28:00 --> 00:28:04 And that pore here is designed so that while a sodium can't escape 321 00:28:04 --> 00:28:09 through that pore, and you can imagine there's some 322 00:28:09 --> 00:28:13 little bit of cleaver molecular architecture to make the sodium atom 323 00:28:13 --> 00:28:18 not be able to, sodium ion not be able to get out 324 00:28:18 --> 00:28:23 but a potassium ion be able to get out, a potassium ion can get out. 325 00:28:23 --> 00:28:27 This is a completely open door that allows potassium ions to escape. 326 00:28:27 --> 00:28:32 Now, isn't this stupid? We just spent all this ATP getting 327 00:28:32 --> 00:28:36 potassium in and sodium out, and here I go opening the door for 328 00:28:36 --> 00:28:41 potassium saying you're free to leave despite all the work we put 329 00:28:41 --> 00:28:45 into bringing you into the cell. That makes no sense. All the 330 00:28:45 --> 00:28:50 potassium is just going to rush out. 331 00:28:50 --> 00:28:58 Can all the potassium rush out? 332 00:28:58 --> 00:29:02 The concentration gradient goes which way? It's more inside, 333 00:29:02 --> 00:29:06 more potassium inside, less outside, so the potassium is going to rush 334 00:29:06 --> 00:29:10 out. Yes. Ooh, electrical gradient. 335 00:29:10 --> 00:29:15 If there's an electrical, so maybe at the beginning there's no 336 00:29:15 --> 00:29:19 electrical gradient, so potassium rushes out. 337 00:29:19 --> 00:29:23 What does it do? It makes it more positive on the outside. 338 00:29:23 --> 00:29:28 Now the next potassium wants to rush out. 339 00:29:28 --> 00:29:32 It's going to, it's going down its concentration 340 00:29:32 --> 00:29:36 gradient but it's going up a teeny weenie little electrical gradient. 341 00:29:36 --> 00:29:40 Now that gets out there, and what does it do to the outside? 342 00:29:40 --> 00:29:45 Makes it more positive. So, the third potassium makes it even 343 00:29:45 --> 00:29:49 more positive. And as more and more potassiums 344 00:29:49 --> 00:29:53 rush out, the outside becomes more positive. And every potassium now 345 00:29:53 --> 00:29:58 has to do work to get up that electrical gradient. 346 00:29:58 --> 00:30:02 But, of course, it's still got a concentration 347 00:30:02 --> 00:30:07 gradient pushing it out. So, will they keep going forever? 348 00:30:07 --> 00:30:11 No, they're going to balance each other. There will come a point when 349 00:30:11 --> 00:30:16 the concentration gradient, the force driving potassium out due 350 00:30:16 --> 00:30:20 to the concentration gradient is offset by the electrical gradient 351 00:30:20 --> 00:30:25 pushing potassium in, or keeping potassium in. 352 00:30:25 --> 00:30:33 So, what happens is potassium goes out, rushes out, 353 00:30:33 --> 00:30:41 or goes out, leaks out, potassium leaks out which now sets 354 00:30:41 --> 00:30:51 up an electrical gradient. 355 00:30:51 --> 00:30:56 And what happens is the cell becomes more positive on the outside, 356 00:30:56 --> 00:31:02 more negative on the inside, and an equilibrium potential is reached, 357 00:31:02 --> 00:31:09 equilibrium is reached. 358 00:31:09 --> 00:31:12 So, an equilibrium electrical potential -- 359 00:31:12 --> 00:31:22 -- is reached when the concentration 360 00:31:22 --> 00:31:30 gradient exactly offsets, when it balances the electrical 361 00:31:30 --> 00:31:39 gradient. 362 00:31:39 --> 00:31:43 Any guesses to what that electrical concentration gradient is? 363 00:31:43 --> 00:31:48 Minus 70 millivolts. That's where minus 70 millivolts comes from. 364 00:31:48 --> 00:31:53 It comes because that's the concentration gradient at which 365 00:31:53 --> 00:31:58 potassium going up that gradient just offsets the, yes? 366 00:31:58 --> 00:32:11 Well, because, 367 00:32:11 --> 00:32:14 oh, it doesn't. The electrical potential wants to 368 00:32:14 --> 00:32:17 keep it in. The concentration wants it out. The electrical wants it in. 369 00:32:17 --> 00:32:20 That's why we have an equilibrium. Exactly. It's those two balancing 370 00:32:20 --> 00:32:23 forces. Very good. So, how much potassium, 371 00:32:23 --> 00:32:26 by the way, has to rush out to set this up? It turns out 372 00:32:26 --> 00:32:30 a trivial amount. It turns out that about ten to, 373 00:32:30 --> 00:32:34 one part in ten to the sixth of all the potassium ions leaving sets up a 374 00:32:34 --> 00:32:39 gradient of about minus, of about five millivolts, 375 00:32:39 --> 00:32:43 minus five millivolts. One part in a million of the potassium ions will 376 00:32:43 --> 00:32:48 suffice to set up a concentration gradient of minus five millivolts. 377 00:32:48 --> 00:32:52 So, all I've got to do is set up about, let's see, 378 00:32:52 --> 00:32:57 I don't know, less than, I don't know, maybe about one part 379 00:32:57 --> 00:33:02 in ten to the fifth of all the potassium ions leaving. 380 00:33:02 --> 00:33:05 A tiny contribution of the concentration. 381 00:33:05 --> 00:33:08 Changing the concentration by one part in ten to the fifth will get me 382 00:33:08 --> 00:33:11 minus 50 millivolts already. So, what's very interesting is 383 00:33:11 --> 00:33:15 teeny amounts of ions set up a very big electrical gradient and have no 384 00:33:15 --> 00:33:18 real effect on the concentration, but they have a big effect on the 385 00:33:18 --> 00:33:21 electrical gradient. So, when I say potassium leaks out, 386 00:33:21 --> 00:33:25 it only takes a teeny bit of potassium to leak out in order to 387 00:33:25 --> 00:33:29 accomplish this. OK, guys. Now let's get ready to make an 388 00:33:29 --> 00:33:35 action potential. Here it goes. So, 389 00:33:35 --> 00:33:45 the action potential mechanism. 390 00:33:45 --> 00:33:51 We've set up our resting potential by transporters, 391 00:33:51 --> 00:33:57 by this open channel. Now, the first thing we have is a 392 00:33:57 --> 00:34:03 new kind of membrane channel. We have a voltage gated 393 00:34:03 --> 00:34:19 sodium channel. 394 00:34:19 --> 00:34:26 Check this out. This guy here is a channel that's 395 00:34:26 --> 00:34:35 closed. It's closed. Except, so at minus 70 millivolts 396 00:34:35 --> 00:34:45 it's closed. But if I can transiently depolarize the cell to 397 00:34:45 --> 00:34:56 minus 50 millivolts it opens and it admits sodium. 398 00:34:56 --> 00:35:04 So, when I get to minus 50 it opens. Now, what will sodium do when that 399 00:35:04 --> 00:35:10 door opens? Let's see. Electrically what would sodium, 400 00:35:10 --> 00:35:20 what would sodium do? 401 00:35:20 --> 00:35:23 So what, well, how about concentration? 402 00:35:23 --> 00:35:26 From the point of view of concentration what would sodium, 403 00:35:26 --> 00:35:30 oh, what did I just draw here? Ooh, forget my error. 404 00:35:30 --> 00:35:34 Electrically what would sodium like to do? It would like to come in, 405 00:35:34 --> 00:35:38 wouldn't it? Because it's negative inside and sodium is positive. 406 00:35:38 --> 00:35:42 But from a concentration gradient what would it like to do? 407 00:35:42 --> 00:35:46 Come in also. So what's stopping it? Nothing. We've got the ion 408 00:35:46 --> 00:35:50 that would like to come in electrically and would like to come 409 00:35:50 --> 00:35:54 in from the point of view of concentration. 410 00:35:54 --> 00:35:58 So what happens? It comes in. And it comes rushing 411 00:35:58 --> 00:36:02 in. Now, what happens as it comes 412 00:36:02 --> 00:36:06 rushing in? What will it do to our electrical potential? 413 00:36:06 --> 00:36:11 We went from minus 70, we got it transiently up to minus 50, 414 00:36:11 --> 00:36:15 and as it comes in what does it do to our electrical gradient? 415 00:36:15 --> 00:36:20 Brings in positive charge. The electrical gradient goes towards 416 00:36:20 --> 00:36:24 zero. Does it stop at zero? No, because now, even as the cell 417 00:36:24 --> 00:36:29 becomes positive in the interior, sodium still wants to keep coming in 418 00:36:29 --> 00:36:34 because of it's concentration gradient. 419 00:36:34 --> 00:36:39 It now has to do some work against the electrical gradient that's set 420 00:36:39 --> 00:36:44 up, but it keeps going and going and going. Does it go on forever? 421 00:36:44 --> 00:36:49 No, because eventually it reaches a point where the electrical gradient, 422 00:36:49 --> 00:36:54 positive now inside the cell, offsets the concentration gradient 423 00:36:54 --> 00:36:59 and it'll stop and it'll reach a new equilibrium potential which turns 424 00:36:59 --> 00:37:04 out to be at about plus 50. Amazing. Opens the door. 425 00:37:04 --> 00:37:08 Sodium comes rushing in down its concentration electrical gradient, 426 00:37:08 --> 00:37:13 shifts the electrical gradient from being negative to positive, 427 00:37:13 --> 00:37:17 and eventually it slows itself down because it's now going against an 428 00:37:17 --> 00:37:22 electrical gradient. But that's not the end of the story 429 00:37:22 --> 00:37:27 because what there also is, there are two other interesting 430 00:37:27 --> 00:37:31 functions. One, after a certain amount of time, 431 00:37:31 --> 00:37:39 after a very brief time interval -- 432 00:37:39 --> 00:37:42 -- this channel also has the property that it closes. 433 00:37:42 --> 00:37:49 So now when it closes, 434 00:37:49 --> 00:37:53 what's going to happen? The pumps will start working again 435 00:37:53 --> 00:37:57 and reestablish our negative 50. It's going to take too long, though. 436 00:37:57 --> 00:38:02 I mean it'll happen. You'd get back to minus 50, 437 00:38:02 --> 00:38:06 but it's going to take a long time. So it's good that the channels, 438 00:38:06 --> 00:38:11 that the voltage gated sodium channel closed, 439 00:38:11 --> 00:38:15 but even better nature has arranged to have a voltage gated 440 00:38:15 --> 00:38:25 potassium channel. 441 00:38:25 --> 00:38:31 And what happens to this voltage gated potassium channel is around 442 00:38:31 --> 00:38:37 plus 30 millivolts it opens and admits potassium. 443 00:38:37 --> 00:38:45 Now, instead of having to wait for the relatively slow ATP-driven pumps, 444 00:38:45 --> 00:38:53 what happens when I admit potassium? Well, if the cell is positive on 445 00:38:53 --> 00:39:01 the inside, negative on the outside, what happens to our potassium? 446 00:39:01 --> 00:39:08 Potassium starts coming out because there's more potassium on the inside 447 00:39:08 --> 00:39:15 and there's also a favorable electrical gradient. 448 00:39:15 --> 00:39:22 So, potassium explosively starts rushing out and rapidly 449 00:39:22 --> 00:39:30 reestablishes the resting potential. All this happening in a millisecond. 450 00:39:30 --> 00:39:34 It's very impressive. So, in something like one 451 00:39:34 --> 00:39:38 millisecond we open up the potassium channels. Now, 452 00:39:38 --> 00:39:42 you have to ask how did it happen that the channels got open in the 453 00:39:42 --> 00:39:46 first place? How did we get to minus 50? That's the work of these 454 00:39:46 --> 00:39:51 dendrites. The dendrites integrating a signal from all the 455 00:39:51 --> 00:39:55 things impacting on it will get the cell to minus 50, 456 00:39:55 --> 00:39:59 but once the cell gets to minus 50 at its axon hillock, 457 00:39:59 --> 00:40:03 bingo, the action potential fires, the cell zips up to plus 50 in a big 458 00:40:03 --> 00:40:07 rush of sodiums and then zips down to minus 70 again in a big rush of 459 00:40:07 --> 00:40:16 potassiums. Yes? 460 00:40:16 --> 00:40:19 Yup. Remember I said it was only like one part and ten to the fifth 461 00:40:19 --> 00:40:22 of the ions? It's a trivial actual, the number of ions necessary to set 462 00:40:22 --> 00:40:25 up these electrical things is such a tiny fraction of the concentration 463 00:40:25 --> 00:40:29 that through this whole thing those concentrations don't 464 00:40:29 --> 00:40:32 noticeably change. That's what's so cool, 465 00:40:32 --> 00:40:36 is there are different regimes, right? And they do change. They 466 00:40:36 --> 00:40:39 change by one part and ten to the fifth of those numbers. 467 00:40:39 --> 00:40:42 It's really cool, isn't it? We haven't screwed up our 468 00:40:42 --> 00:40:46 concentration gradient? We moved tiny numbers of ions to 469 00:40:46 --> 00:40:49 accomplish all this. This is very cleaver engineering. 470 00:40:49 --> 00:40:53 It's very cleaver engineering. Now, how do we manage to transmit this 471 00:40:53 --> 00:40:56 signal down a cell? Well, let's talk about how we 472 00:40:56 --> 00:41:00 propagate. I think this is really cool. 473 00:41:00 --> 00:41:04 This is one of the truly great mechanisms that was invented. 474 00:41:04 --> 00:41:19 Transmitting an action potential. 475 00:41:19 --> 00:41:27 Suppose I transmit my action. Suppose I have a neuron here and 476 00:41:27 --> 00:41:35 over here, at the axon hillock, I transiently depolarize to minus 50. 477 00:41:35 --> 00:41:43 Then I fire and fire. 478 00:41:43 --> 00:41:49 Well, what happens is this part of the cell was originally minus, 479 00:41:49 --> 00:41:55 minus, minus, plus, plus, plus, it becomes positive temporarily, 480 00:41:55 --> 00:42:04 right? It now becomes -- 481 00:42:04 --> 00:42:10 -- plus, plus, plus. So, let's go minus along the 482 00:42:10 --> 00:42:16 whole cell here. Plus, plus, plus, 483 00:42:16 --> 00:42:23 plus, plus. Now, some little patch of membrane at the beginning of the 484 00:42:23 --> 00:42:29 axon has become positive inside, right? Because whatever local 485 00:42:29 --> 00:42:35 affect here caused this to flip. If this becomes positive at this 486 00:42:35 --> 00:42:40 part of the membrane, what happens to the negative charges 487 00:42:40 --> 00:42:46 over here a little bit further down the axon? Some of them will be 488 00:42:46 --> 00:42:51 pulled over to the positive. Ho-ho. Some negative charges get 489 00:42:51 --> 00:42:56 pulled over. Well, what happens when some of those 490 00:42:56 --> 00:43:02 negative charges get pulled over to my minus 70 millivolts? 491 00:43:02 --> 00:43:08 Is it as negative as it was before? No. It becomes minus 50 millivolts. 492 00:43:08 --> 00:43:14 Oh. What happens when this becomes minus 50 millivolts? 493 00:43:14 --> 00:43:21 Fires an action potential. So, what happens is, here's my axon, 494 00:43:21 --> 00:43:27 I fire an action, I have an action potential here, 495 00:43:27 --> 00:43:34 and in the course of that I pull over some negative charge. 496 00:43:34 --> 00:43:38 That, of course, transiently depolarizes here and 497 00:43:38 --> 00:43:42 causes an action potential to fire. Then, of course, this becomes 498 00:43:42 --> 00:43:46 positive which pulls over some negative charge which causes the 499 00:43:46 --> 00:43:50 action potential to fire here, etc., etc., etc. So, if I can 500 00:43:50 --> 00:43:55 manage to get the thing started with my dendrites causing a transient 501 00:43:55 --> 00:43:59 depolarization from minus 70 to minus 50 then the action potential 502 00:43:59 --> 00:44:03 itself will draw over some charge and start the process at the next 503 00:44:03 --> 00:44:07 patch of membrane, the next patch of the next membrane, 504 00:44:07 --> 00:44:12 the next patch of the next membrane and the next patch of membrane. 505 00:44:12 --> 00:44:17 And it gets all the way down to the end. It's a brilliant mechanism. 506 00:44:17 --> 00:44:22 You can calculate, based on the diffusion coefficient of ions, 507 00:44:22 --> 00:44:28 how long it will take to transmit that signal. And it's OK 508 00:44:28 --> 00:44:33 but not good enough. I'd like it to go faster. 509 00:44:33 --> 00:44:40 How can I make it go faster? 510 00:44:40 --> 00:44:46 How about put an insulator around it? It turns out that with one little 511 00:44:46 --> 00:44:52 trick, I can speed this up dramatically. Oh, 512 00:44:52 --> 00:44:58 sorry. Sorry about that. The trick is suppose I were to wrap 513 00:44:58 --> 00:45:04 some insulator around the axon that would make this such that it could 514 00:45:04 --> 00:45:10 not, that it was not an electrical contract outside, 515 00:45:10 --> 00:45:16 that it was only an electric contact with the outside solution 516 00:45:16 --> 00:45:22 here, here, here. Then, when the action potential 517 00:45:22 --> 00:45:27 fires here, it's going to pull charges over, not from the tiny 518 00:45:27 --> 00:45:31 little patch of membrane here, but the charges are going to have to 519 00:45:31 --> 00:45:36 come from here, it turns out, because that's where 520 00:45:36 --> 00:45:41 I'm going to next feel my action potential. And so what'll happen is 521 00:45:41 --> 00:45:45 that the action potential, if this stuff is electrically 522 00:45:45 --> 00:45:50 insulated, will only be happening at this little gaps between the 523 00:45:50 --> 00:45:55 insulation. And I can dramatically speed up the electrical transmission 524 00:45:55 --> 00:46:00 if I'm willing to insulate the wire. 525 00:46:00 --> 00:46:04 Because then there's much less leakage along the way. 526 00:46:04 --> 00:46:09 So, it turns out that there are special cells that wrap themselves 527 00:46:09 --> 00:46:14 around the axon that are called Schwann cells. 528 00:46:14 --> 00:46:19 The Schwann cell wraps itself around and around and around and 529 00:46:19 --> 00:46:24 squeezes out all of its cytoplasm leaving only a lipid bilayer. 530 00:46:24 --> 00:46:29 Lipid bilayers wrapped around and around and around make 531 00:46:29 --> 00:46:35 great insulators. This is called the myelin sheath of 532 00:46:35 --> 00:46:41 a nerve. These myelin sheaths allow the transmission of this action 533 00:46:41 --> 00:46:48 potential to proceed about a hundred times faster. Very cleaver. 534 00:46:48 --> 00:46:54 Now you ask me how do I know this matters? I mean you can calculate 535 00:46:54 --> 00:47:01 that it should go about 100 times faster. 536 00:47:01 --> 00:47:07 But how would you really know that it mattered. Try taking them off. 537 00:47:07 --> 00:47:13 Unfortunately, there is a disease that takes them off. 538 00:47:13 --> 00:47:20 Some human patients make autoimmune reactions against their own myelin. 539 00:47:20 --> 00:47:26 It attacks their own myelin and leads to the demyelination 540 00:47:26 --> 00:47:32 of the nerves. This disease is called multiple 541 00:47:32 --> 00:47:38 sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis involves an autoimmune attack on 542 00:47:38 --> 00:47:44 your very own myelin sheaths, and the effects, the very serious 543 00:47:44 --> 00:47:50 effects that multiple sclerosis can have on an individual come from the 544 00:47:50 --> 00:47:56 greatly diminished, hundred-fold diminished conduction 545 00:47:56 --> 00:48:02 velocity of electrical signals down motor neurons along these 546 00:48:02 --> 00:48:07 large distances. So, this is, in fact, 547 00:48:07 --> 00:48:11 the basic electrical setup. We have taken a situation where we 548 00:48:11 --> 00:48:15 don't have electrical wires at all but have concocted, 549 00:48:15 --> 00:48:19 through chemistry, a powerful way to create signals. 550 00:48:19 --> 00:48:23 First, by setting up a resting potential using pumps and an open 551 00:48:23 --> 00:48:27 potassium channel. Then by setting up this explosive 552 00:48:27 --> 00:48:31 mechanism where a little change in voltage which, 553 00:48:31 --> 00:48:36 of course, has a huge change in field, swings open a sodium channel, 554 00:48:36 --> 00:48:40 shuts it, swings open a potassium channel, and then cleverly recruits 555 00:48:40 --> 00:48:45 charges from down the neuron and sends the signal. 556 00:48:45 --> 00:48:49 Next time we shall talk about what happens when the signal gets all the 557 00:48:49 --> 00:48:54 way to the other end and it has to talk to the next neuron. 558 00:48:54 --> 48:59 Till next time.