Biologist Mu-ming Poo awarded Gruber Neuroscience Prize

University of California, Berkeley, biologist Mu-ming Poo has been awarded the 2016 Gruber Neuroscience Prize for work showing how the brain's circuitry changes in response to life experiences.

Announcing the recipient of the prestigious prize on Tuesday, the Gruber Foundation said Poo has greatly advanced the field of neuroscience through his seminal discoveries regarding the molecular and cell mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity, the ability of neurons to change their connections.

"His research approach has been exceptionally broad," said the foundation based in Yale University. "In addition to his groundbreaking discoveries regarding synaptic plasticity, he has made important contributions in several other research areas, including neuronal polarization, the maturation of the neuromuscular junction, the molecular and cell mechanisms underlying axon guidance, and the neurotrophic regulation of synaptic functions."

The prize, which comes with a 500,000 U.S. dollars cash award, has been given annually since 2004 to scientists "whose groundbreaking work provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture."

"I am deeply honored and pleased by the award," Poo was quoted by UC Berkeley News as writing in an email from Shanghai, eastern China, where he is the founding director of the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, which has been a major player in boosting the quality of neuroscience research in China since its establishment in 1999.

At UC Berkeley, Poo is the Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology Emeritus.

He was born in eastern Chinese city of Nanjing in 1948 and came to UC Berkeley in 2000 after having been on the faculties of UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Yale and Columbia universities.

"While remaining at Berkeley, he took the lead in building the Institute of Neuroscience into an exceptional institution," said UC Berkeley colleague Marla Feller, a professor of molecular and cell biology.

Poo combined physics and biology early in his career to study the movement of cell-membrane proteins. This led to an interest in events at the synapse, the junction between two neurons, and then synapse formation and plasticity, the process by which the junctions change with nerve activity.

According to Feller, Poo has contributed to at least five fields within neuroscience, many of which have to do with the various stages of development during which neurons are wired together to form circuits. "His experiments are characterized by innovative and very often ingenious approaches to study some of the most important questions in cellular neuroscience."

"Through his innovative and ingenious experiments, Mu-ming Poo has greatly advanced knowledge of mechanisms of brain plasticity - the ability to form new connections or change the strength of existing ones driven by our experiences of the world - in nerve cells," said neuroscientist and 2015 Gruber prize-winner Carla Shatz of Stanford University in a statement. "He has enhanced our understanding of how synapses, the special junctions between nerve cells so crucial for all brain functions, are reinforced or weakened by neural activity."

"My work on synaptic plasticity over the years, much of which was done at Berkeley, have provided the rationale and the approach in using physiological and physical stimulation in the treatment of brain disorders," Poo wrote in the email. "In particular, we have shown how precise timing of electrical stimulation of a specific neural pathway is critical in altering the efficiency of synaptic transmission in neural circuits."

"With increasing understanding of specific neural circuit defects underlying various brain disorders, synaptic plasticity-based and circuit-specific stimulation approaches may become an attractive therapeutic approach in treating brain diseases, especially during the early phase of the disease onset."

The award will be presented to Poo in San Diego, California, on November 13 at the 46th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), a gathering of hundreds of researchers from more than 80 countries. Endit