Discovery provides clues to development of neurological diseases and cancer
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Samuel Pfaff. |
The Salk researchers discovered that only a few proteins on the
leading edge of a motor neuron's axon - its outgoing electrical "wire" -
and within the extracellular soup it travels through guide the nerve as
it emerges from the spinal cord. These molecules can attract or repel
the axon, depending on the long and winding path it must take to finally
connect with its target muscle.
"The budding neuron has to detect the local environment it is
growing through and decide where it is, and whether to grow straight,
move to the left or right, or stop," says the study's senior
investigator, Sam Pfaff, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression
Laboratory and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
"It does this by mixing and matching just a handful of protein
products to create complexes that tell a growing neuron which way to go,
in the same way that a car uses the GPS signals it receives to guide it
through an unfamiliar city," he says.
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