- [Leonid] How do you remember your first kiss
for the rest of your life?
This is a journey through the brain, to genome,
to ocean, and back to clinics
all big cycle of life
which shall help us to uncover one of the greatest mystery
in the universe
and one of the most complex machinery
on this planet, our brain.
(piano music)
- When we were talking about studying long-term memory
I didn't think about Palm Beach.
- Well, it's memorable, isn't it?
But we're really here to meet Andrea Kohn
and Leonid Moroz.
Leonid's just back from a long trip
all the way from Panama
and they collected samples along the way.
I'm dying to see what they got.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- How do you study long-term memory?
- One of the most stable molecules in our body is DNA.
We did direct single cell genomic analysis
of the circuits before, during, and after
simple memory formation.
Within half an hour
significant fraction of the DNA chemically modified.
That is really incredible.
So we went to the sea.
We pick up organism
which has reasonably simple neural system
which is the sea slug, Aplysia
and the beauty of this creature
has beautifully colored large neurons.
- So how are neurons different?
- Our data show that neurons are different
not only because they have different functions,
neurons are different
because they have different genealogies.
They have different divisional histories.
Neurons that are superficially similar
genetically, remarkably different.
Different neurons of memory circuits
learn differently.
- So we looked at two neurons
and we studied how they aged.
As they aged they became totally different from each other.
This gives us a lot of information
about what could be happening in our brains as we age.
(happy instrumental music)
One of the first animals we looked at
were the Ctenophores or comb jellies.
They have enormous combs that they move through the water
and they're iridescent so they refract light
and that's what gives them their color.
- These Ctenophores have got no neurotransmitters
like we have?
- These guys develop neural system independently from us.
For vast majority of neurotransmitters
they don't have transmitters like serotonin,
dopamine, noradrenaline, acetylcholine.
So you have real alien neural system in our seas.
- It seems like there must have been
a very, very ancient ancestor.
- One of the early branch in animal lineage
one of the descendants for most ancient animal
in our planet,
they branch from our common ancestor earliest
so they may be ancestor for the rest of the animals.
They reinvented a lot of stuff themselves,
the beautiful solutions for very complex problems.
(happy orchestral string music)
- So how do you study RNA modifications?
- What's really critical is that we really need to go
to a single nucleotide level.
We need to be able to find that exact modification
and that specific gene
and what that modification actually does to its function.
This is really what's key.
Modifications are very conserved across nature
so we can literally sit there
and 100% of the time statistically predict
what neuron we actually have
by looking at its modifications.
- Could you describe more these RNA modifications for us?
- There's chemical modifications
and then there's RNA editing.
The RNA modifications change the chemical memory or RNA
by adding something
like a methyl group to adenosine.
This will change the whole chemical environment
of this molecule.
The RNA editing will change
basically one nucleotide to another
and usually it's like an adenosine to an inosine
and so these are almost like a patterned
kind of modification that you can literally follow.
(happy orchestral music)
- So how are you going to search for more animals
in what you call the laboratory of nature?
- I do believe within five, 10 years
we can get entire genomic blueprint of our ocean.
There are some animals have no cancers.
There are some animals which do not age much.
There are some neurons which do not age much.
This has to be studied
on the level of very, very specific cells.
So we estimate
that there's about 40 million biologically active compounds
which probably still await discovery.
- Our big mission is to be able to educate the public
about what we're doing
and we couldn't have done any of this
without our funding sources such as NIH, NASA, and NSF.
- This is really what drives us.
And when we just start to work with this
you'll see how people get engaged.
I mean, just even if you love art
sometimes what you can just really see in the microscope
virtually impossible to even imagine.
- How can you translate the results
on these animals to mammals?
- 70% of the genes are actually the same 70%
that are in humans.
- Will this also give you insight
into neurodegenerative diseases and things like that?
- It does, what is missing
is early diagnostic and detections.
We need to detect early event.
- What's the probability that these discoveries
will transfer into human health?
- Hundred percent.
(hopeful instrumental music)
- You know, I never fully realized
the complexity of ocean life at a molecular level.
It's like looking into evolution's workshop.
- Yes, and I like the idea that the ocean holds the key
to understanding how neurodegenerative diseases work.
- You know, if you don't know how it works
you can't fix it.
- Yeah, and with aging populations
it's becoming an important issue.
(hopeful instrumental music)