How does the brain order proteins to be produced?

[Franz H]

Dear ScienceForums Community, 

I have tried to find an explanatory video to illustrate this process, but could only find videos about the inner workings of the DNA and how it is being decoded to build proteins piece by piece. 

So the process I'm interested in is the process of how (or if) the brain gives the order to start producing a certain protein. I'm wondering whether there is a certain chemical sent by the brain which then starts the process of protein production in certain cells. 

I'd be thankful for some insight by the biologists or neuroscientists out here!

 

Best Regards 

Franz

[exchemist]

13 minutes ago, Franz H said:

Dear ScienceForums Community, 

I have tried to find an explanatory video to illustrate this process, but could only find videos about the inner workings of the DNA and how it is being decoded to build proteins piece by piece. 

So the process I'm interested in is the process of how (or if) the brain gives the order to start producing a certain protein. I'm wondering whether there is a certain chemical sent by the brain which then starts the process of protein production in certain cells. 

I'd be thankful for some insight by the biologists or neuroscientists out here!

 

Best Regards 

Franz

The brain has nothing to do with it. If a brain were needed, no organism would ever develop from the egg - and there would be no plants. Just think about it for a moment. 

 

[Franz H]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

The brain has nothing to do with it. If a brain were needed, no organism would ever develop from the egg - and there would be no plants. Just think about it for a moment. 

 

Ok. So the brain is not needed for protein production. Makes total sense. 

Is it certain that there is also no way for the brain to influence protein production under specific circumstances? 

After taking a look at some placebo studies I severely wonder how such effects on the bodily healing abilities are possible. 

[exchemist]

7 minutes ago, Franz H said:

Ok. So the brain is not needed for protein production. Makes total sense. 

Is it certain that there is also no way for the brain to influence protein production under specific circumstances? 

After taking a look at some placebo studies I severely wonder how such effects on the bodily healing abilities are possible. 

Well some hormone levels are influenced by the brain. I’d look at that rather than protein production per se. Hormones can affect a lot of processes in the body. 

[CharonY]

There is a lot of signaling going on, but not all (or even most) originates in the brain. Roughly speaking, any metabolite has some potential to influence directly or indirectly gene expression (and thereby protein production). Generally, the signal gets circulated via blood to the various tissues in which the responses are generated. Signals also end up in the brain where it can trigger responses to release signals that goes into the blood and so on. I.e. there is a constant back and forth and not really a hierarchical, central control (in most cases).

 

[joigus]

6 hours ago, Franz H said:

I have tried to find an explanatory video to illustrate this process, but could only find videos about the inner workings of the DNA and how it is being decoded to build proteins piece by piece. 

You've had excellent responses already. You seem to be looking for a video though. Here's one just as a sample:

 

Of course, as they've told you, it's not about the brain monitoring the process, but about regulatory sequences being activated/silenced, etc depending on the signaling going on. In order to understand all of this, you need to have a grasp of the paradigm of molecular biology: replication --> transcription --> translation from DNA to protein, which is almost always the case in bio.

As an extreme case of the complete opposite happening (proteins acquired somewhere else determining the brain's behaviour), bad protein packaging can give you a brain going horribly wrong. Those are called spongiform encephalopathies.

[CharonY]

57 minutes ago, joigus said:

In order to understand all of this, you need to have a grasp of the paradigm of molecular biology:

In case you are referring to the central dogma of  molecular biology, in its original and slightly more accurate form it mostly refers to the information flow from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins. Basically it just states that you can derive the protein sequence from the nucleic acid sequence but not the reverse. The issue is that it RNA processing breaks the "dogma" a bit.

The alternate version, which is more commonly taught in school refers to DNA->RNA->Protein information flow (usually replication is not part of it but at least in principle could be). But that is also not accurate as there are processes such as reverse transcription that break that rule and if one considers the process itself rather than just the information in form of sequence, the involvement of proteins (and RNA) in synthesis, regulation and so on, it is fair bit more complicated.

I am not a big fan (anymore) of calling the process a dogma or paradigm as it is a bit pompous and overinflates what we knew at that time point. Of course that was in the 50s, but there is a reason why we tend not to name things like that in bio that often anymore. It is hard to hold on to specific paradigms when biology tends to do very unexpected things, if you look closely enough. There is a reason why the more I worked in the field, the less I am inclined to assume a certain state of normalcy in biological systems. They are all just different kinds of weird.

[Franz H]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

There is a lot of signaling going on, but not all (or even most) originates in the brain. Roughly speaking, any metabolite has some potential to influence directly or indirectly gene expression (and thereby protein production). Generally, the signal gets circulated via blood to the various tissues in which the responses are generated. Signals also end up in the brain where it can trigger responses to release signals that goes into the blood and so on. I.e. there is a constant back and forth and not really a hierarchical, central control (in most cases).

 

Thank you!!! 

That's exactly what I was looking for!

The fact that gene expression is influenced like that is truly amazing! 

 

1 hour ago, joigus said:

You've had excellent responses already. You seem to be looking for a video though. Here's one just as a sample:

 

Of course, as they've told you, it's not about the brain monitoring the process, but about regulatory sequences being activated/silenced, etc depending on the signaling going on. In order to understand all of this, you need to have a grasp of the paradigm of molecular biology: replication --> transcription --> translation from DNA to protein, which is almost always the case in bio.

As an extreme case of the complete opposite happening (proteins acquired somewhere else determining the brain's behaviour), bad protein packaging can give you a brain going horribly wrong. Those are called spongiform encephalopathies.

Ah thanks! 

Very interesting as well! 

[joigus]

52 minutes ago, CharonY said:

The alternate version, which is more commonly taught in school refers to DNA->RNA->Protein information flow (usually replication is not part of it but at least in principle could be). But that is also not accurate as there are processes such as reverse transcription that break that rule and if one considers the process itself rather than just the information in form of sequence, the involvement of proteins (and RNA) in synthesis, regulation and so on, it is fair bit more complicated.

It would be, not only presumptuous, but plain stupid for me to disagree with you.

I'm keenly aware of this, yes. And I was for a while thinking about making due qualifications --retroviruses, that you mention, for which RNA goes to DNA, and prions, which I implied without mentioning them, and have to do more with folding or packaging of proteins of "chaperoning" as I understand. That's why I chose the prions as an (admittedly extreme) example of how the doings of the proteins more heavily determine what the brain ultimately looks like, does or doesn't do than the other way around. I introduced that example precisely because the OP was about the brain in particular.

Francis Crick famously regretted having called this DNA-to-RNA-to-protein predominant flow of information a "dogma".

Dogma is something accepted without question, while paradigm is just a typical example of a pattern.

It is unfortunate that so many people use the word "paradigm" more pompously than it deserves, IMO. A paradigm is just a typical example of something.

But you're totally right, of course. It's more complicated that that, with lots of feedback going on from the organ level to the molecular level, and back.

 

[CharonY]

26 minutes ago, joigus said:

Francis Crick famously regretted having called this DNA-to-RNA-to-protein predominant flow of information a "dogma".

Didn't stop Watson to propagate the alternate version. Obviously, the idea was important at that point as until then, the idea of gene expression and protein biosynthesis was not coherent. But if anything, our understanding of biology tends to change rapidly (though at the moment it feels that several areas are slowing down, but that might be just weird gut feeling and the consequence of getting old).

 

29 minutes ago, joigus said:

But you're totally right, of course. It's more complicated that that, with lots of feedback going on from the organ level to the molecular level, and back.

 

Things are also fun if watched from the molecular perspective only. Many aspects, such as how the DNA is twisted and/or wrapped around proteins also influence gene expression and there might be other spatial effects related to protein crowding and so on.