• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Sunday, February 5, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Neuroscience

Scientists unravel mystery of brain cell growth

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
August 11, 2014
in Neuroscience
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

In the developing brain, special proteins that act like molecular tugboats push or pull on growing nerve cells, or neurons, helping them navigate to their assigned places amidst the brain’s wiring.

Scientists unravel mystery of brain cell growth

How a single protein can exert both a push and a pull force to nudge a neuron in the desired direction is a longstanding mystery that has now been solved by scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators in Europe and China.

Jia-huai Wang, PhD, who led the work at Dana-Farber and Peking University in Beijing, is a corresponding author of a report published in the August 7 online edition of Neuron that explains how one guidance protein, netrin-1, can either attract or repel a brain cell to steer it along its course. Wang and co-authors at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, used X-ray crystallography to reveal the three-dimensional atomic structure of netrin-1 as it bound to a docking molecule, called DCC, on the axon of a neuron. The axon is the long, thin extension of a neuron that connects to other neurons or to muscle cells.

As connections between neurons are established – in the developing brain and throughout life – axons grow out from a neuron and extend through the brain until they reach the neuron they are connecting to. To choose its path, a growing axon senses and reacts to different molecules it encounters along the way. One of these molecules, netrin-1, posed an interesting puzzle: an axon can be both attracted to and repelled from this cue. The axon’s behavior is determined by two types of receptors on its tip: DCC drives attraction, while UNC5 in combination with DCC drives repulsion.

“How netrin works at the molecular level has long been a puzzle in neuroscience field,” said Wang, “We now provide structure evidences that reveal a novel mechanism of this important guidance cue molecule.” The structure showed that netrin-1 binds not to one, but to two DCC molecules. And most surprisingly, it binds those two molecules in different ways.

“Normally a receptor and a signal are like lock-and-key, they have evolved to bind each other and are highly specific – and that’s what we see in one netrin site,” said Meijers. “But the second binding site is a very unusual one, which is not specific for DCC.”

Not all of the second binding site connects directly to a receptor. Instead, in a large portion of the binding interface, it requires small molecules that act as middle-men. These intermediary molecules seem to have a preference for UNC5, so if the axon has both UNC5 and DCC receptors, netrin-1 will bind to one copy of UNC5 via those molecules and the other copy of DCC at the DCC-specific site. This triggers a cascade of events inside the cell that ultimately drives the axon away from the source of netrin-1, author Yan Zhang’s lab at Peking University found. The researchers surmised that, if an axon has only DCC receptors, each netrin-1 molecule binds two DCC molecules, which results in the axon being attracted to netrin-1. “By controlling whether or not UNC5 is present on its tip, an axon can switch from moving toward netrin to moving away from it, weaving through the brain to establish the right connection,” said Zhang.

Knowing how neurons switch from being attracted to netrin to being repelled opens the door to devise ways of activating that switch in other cells that respond to netrin cues, too. For instance, many cancer cells produce netrin to attract growing blood vessels that bring them nourishment and allow the tumor to grow, so switching off that attraction could starve the tumor, or at least prevent it from growing.

On the other hand, when cancers metastasize they often stop being responsive to netrin. In fact, the DCC receptor was first identified as a marker for an aggressive form of colon cancer, and DCC stands for “deleted in colorectal cancer.” Since colorectal cancer cells have no DCC, they are ‘immune’ to the programmed cell death that would normally follow once they move away from the lining of the gut and no longer have access to netrin. As a result, these tumor cells continue to move into the bloodstream, and metastasize to other tissues. “Therefore, to understand the molecular mechanism of how netrin works should also have a good impact in cancer biology,” said Wang.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Tags: brain cell growth
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Redox biomarker could predict progression of epilepsy

October 5, 2016
blank

Neural membrane’s structural instability may trigger multiple sclerosis

October 5, 2016

Scientists find new path in brain to ease depression

October 5, 2016

Key players responsible for learning and memory formation uncovered

October 3, 2016
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Jean du Terrail, Senior Machine Learning Scientist at Owkin

    Nature Medicine publishes breakthrough Owkin research on the first ever use of federated learning to train deep learning models on multiple hospitals’ histopathology data

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • First made-in-Singapore antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) approved to enter clinical trials

    58 shares
    Share 23 Tweet 15
  • Metal-free batteries raise hope for more sustainable and economical grids

    41 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • One-pot reaction creates versatile building block for bioactive molecules

    37 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Health Equity Report Card pilot project to help close the care gap highlighted on World Cancer Day

Tech that turns household surfaces into touch sensors is a touch closer to application

Preference for naturally talented over hard workers emerges in childhood, HKUST researchers find

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 42 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In