With a Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Mary Kennedy will continue her long-term study on elucidating the molecular structure of synaptic modification during learning and memory. Presently, Dr. Kennedy is studying the biochemical mechanisms that underlie synaptic plasticity, the basis for information storage in the brain. Dr. Kennedy's laboratory was the first to identify and purify type II CAM kinase, a brain calcium dependent protein enzyme. This enzyme is a specialized product of nerve cells in the forebrain that plays a role in the initiation of long-term potentiation, an important form of synaptic regulation that underlies the early stages of memory formation. The major goals of this research will be to identify functionally important synaptic proteins in CNS nerve cells that are regulated by CAM kinase, and to develop novel quantitative methods to measure the time course and cellular location of regulatory phosphorylation events in nerve cells.
