midterm 1 review

Question 1

what is likely to be seen with increased spine size?

Answer 1

1. increased post-synaptic density
2. increased number of AMPARs
3. increased presynaptic active zone
4. increased number of docked vesicles

Question 2

what molecular motor would you expect to be carrying a damaged mitochondrial fragment?

Answer 2

dynein moving in retrograde direction

Question 3

which seal is the key to patch-clamp recording

Answer 3

gigaohm seal

Question 4

how many synapses are involved in “knee jerk “ reflex?

Answer 4

3

Question 5

which disease is caused by peripheral demyelination?

Answer 5

Guillain-barre syndrome

Question 6

multiple sclerosis is thought to be a demyelinating disease, which type of glial cell would it target then?

Answer 6

oligodendrocyte

Question 7

local signal is what kind of propagation?

Answer 7

passive propagation

Question 8

the arborization of dendrites of neuron is increased. how will this affect the likelihood to reach the threshold of action potential?

Answer 8

it can decrease membrane resistance, which gives rise to a smaller voltage change. so it is less likely to reach threshold.

Question 9

5. You have discovered a new ion transporter that you guess only exports Na ions. You wish to see if this new transporter either a) harnesses some other inward ionic concentration gradient to export the Na or b) uses energy from ATP hydrolysis to export Na. Which of the following would be futile towards answering this question

Answer 9

decrease the external concentration of the other likely ion and see if the export of Na decreases as you do so.

use a drug to block ATP synthesis to see if the export of Na decreases.