New Findings On Drug Addiction And Abstinence (7/3/2007)

The fight against the dependence of psychoactive substances forms a gross challenge in the new century, and becomes a research "hot spot" for toxicology and psychology. Yet, one stumbling block on the way to the research progress lies in the precise description at the molecular level of the anomaly in the synaptic morphology and neuro-physiological mechanism taking place in the addictive process.

Teaming up with a research group led by ZHU Yongping from the James D. Watson Institute of Genome Sciences, Zhejiang University, Prof. SUN Zhongsheng from the CAS Institute of Psychology has made new discoveries on the problem. Under the title of "Proteomic Analysis of Rat Prefrontal Cortex in Three Phases of Morphine-Induced Conditioned Place Preference," the research work was published in a recent issue of Journal of Proteome Research.

As prefrontal cortex (PFC) is one of the most important brain regions, which provides executive control over drug use and is severely impaired in many addicts, it is necessary to make a systematic analysis of the biochemical and molecular alteration of synaptic fraction of PFC in morphine-induced neuroadaptation. In this study, differential protein expression profiling of synaptic fraction of rat PFC based on morphine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) model was performed with two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE). The results showed that a total of 80 proteins were differentially expressed by 2-DE analysis during three phases of CPP assay. Of them, 58 were further identified by mass spectrometry. These proteins were classified into multiple categories, such as energy metabolism, signal transduction, synaptic transmission, cytoskeletal proteins, chaperones, and local synaptic protein synthetic machinery according to their biological functions. The study provides a global view of synaptic-related molecular networking in PFC under morphine-induced dependence, withdrawal, and relapse, indicative of a concerted biological process in neuroadaptation under chronic morphine exposure.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The Chinese Academy of Sciences

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