Consciousness and Learning based on DNA Recombination and Memristor   Quality of Microtubules
  This paper is a completion of an earlier model proposed by us. In the model different memories are attached at cell surface determinants which are the result of DNA recombination. Our earlier experiments strongly suggest that DNA recombination actually takes place during a short period of early development in the brain in a limited number of neurons. In the present paper a model is presented in which switchboard neurons play a key role in the storage and retrieving of memory. And as a consequence, they play a major role in the process of learning and form the basic material for consciousness. In the original model there was insufficient explanation for the realization of the internal connection of one cell surface determinant to the other. We realized that tubulin should play a role in these intracellular connections. The tubulin molecules can form a connective wire because of a change of shape of the individual tubulin dimers. This way the fast switch is realized by the switch of the tubulin dimer configuration. Because the cell should remember which switch was activated and which one was not or less activated, we postulate the memristor quality of microtubules. 
Axel Dietrich and Willem Been
q-bio.NC