A NOVEL BRAIN GENE, NORBIN, INDUCED BY TREATMENT OF TETRAETHYLAMMONIUM IN RAT HIPPOCAMPAL SLICE AND ACCOMPANIED WITH NEURITE-OUTGROWTH IN NEURO 2A CELLS

Tetraethylammonium (TEA) induces long-term potentiation (LTP)-like syn aptic enhancement in rat hippocampal slices. To find the genes related to this phenomenon, subtraction screening was performed between the m RNA of TEA-treated slices and that of untreated whole brain. One of th e clones induced by the TEA treatment, named as norbin, was expressed only in neural tissues. The predicted protein sequence of norbin consi sted of 729 amino acids, and no homologies in the sequence were found with known genes or proteins. Overexpression of norbin in cultured Neu ro 2a cells by cDNA transfection induced neurite outgrowth. Since in t he course of neural plasticity the formation of new synapses should oc cur, the neurite-outgrowth-related protein, norbin, might play an impo rtant role in neural plasticity. (C) 1997 Academic Press.