Author response: Filopodial dynamics and growth cone stabilization in Drosophila visual circuit development
Year: 2015
Type: peer-review
Abstract: Genes encode complicated developmental processes, but it is clear that genetic information cannot encode each and every individual connection that forms between the nerve cells in a brain. Instead, the individual cells and nerve endings must make decisions during brain development. Up until now, few examples were known for how these nerve endings move and choose their paths and partners in a living, developing brain. The fruit fly Drosophila provides a useful model to explore the ‘wiring’ of nerve cells in the brain, partly because a fruit fly’s brain develops within a few days. However, most previous studies have relied on identifying mutant flies with disrupted brain wiring and studying them using still images. Now, Özel et al. have developed a new imaging method that has enough resolution and speed over sufficiently long periods to track the growing nerve endings in a developing fly brain. The method was applied to a model nerve cell in the fly’s visual system. This revealed that most of this nerve’s dynamic changes are short-lived and random, and appear to help to stabilize the developing nerve ending, rather than guide it to a target. Özel et al. also found that a protein called N-Cadherin, previously thought to be required for the targeting of developing nerve endings, actually plays a role in their stabilization. These findings uncover the roles of changes in nerve endings during long-term brain development; this was previously largely unknown for any organism. The next stage in this research will involve further analyses of both wild type and mutant flies to try and work out general principles about how the brain develops via the decoding of genetic information.
Language: English
Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W2986972500