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Review
. 2006 May-Jun;13(3):241-4.
doi: 10.1101/lm.278206.

Combinatorial chromatin modifications and memory storage: a code for memory?

Marcelo A Wood  1 , Joshua D Hawk, Ted Abel
Affiliations
Review

Combinatorial chromatin modifications and memory storage: a code for memory?

Marcelo A Wood et al. Learn Mem. 2006 May-Jun.
No abstract available

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Memory formation in the hippocampus involves histone modifications. (A) Contextual fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm used to study the neurobiology of memory and involves the activity of a complex neural circuit with many reciprocal connections. In this task, the animal is placed into a novel context and after a brief delay is given a series of footshocks. When later returned to the training context, mice display a stereotyped and species-specific anticipatory response that includes a motionless, defensive posture known as freezing, which is quantified as a measure of context-shock association. The hippocampal formation, a brain region important for encoding contextual fear conditioning (Sanders et al. 2003), receives input from both thalamus and cortex. Hippocampal output feeds back into the cortex as well as into the lateral and basolateral nuclei of the amygdala (Maren and Quirk 2004). Projections from the central nucleus of the amygdala transmit information via the periaqueductal gray and brainstem nuclei to spinal motor neurons that mediate freezing behavior. (B) The hippocampal formation is composed of multiple subregions, each of which is thought to play a distinct, yet integrative, role in hippocampal information processing. Within the CA1 subregion, changes in neuronal response properties involve activation of protein kinase A (PKA) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK). The data from Chwang et al. (2006) suggest that ERK indirectly mediates acetylation and phosphorylation of histone H3. Evidence also suggests that H3 Ser10 is a direct phosphorylation target of PKA (DeManno et al. 1999). Histone acetylation and phosphorylation are thought to have two effects: (1) to neutralize the positively charged histone tails, which reduces their affinity for DNA and thus facilitates transcription, and (2) to establish specific recognition sites for the recruitment of chromatin remodeling proteins such as histone acetyltransferases and ATP-dependent nucleosome remodeling complexes, which are associated with transcriptional activation. (C) The combinatorial patterns potentially established by different histone modifications may mediate specific gene expression profiles responsible for modulating the neuronal responses that underlie the formation of memory in the hippocampus. Black arrows in panel C indicate histone H3 residues examined by Chwang et al. (2006). Red octagons with “Me” represent methyl groups. Yellow stars with “P” represent phosphate groups. Green rectangles with “Ac” represent acetyl groups.
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Comment on

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