This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A functional nervous system depends on the cooperation of many kinds of cells. As developing organisms build their nervous systems, their neurons must take on different forms and functions to fulfill their designated roles.
That carefully orchestrated process gives rise to thousands of different cell types in the human brain. In the tiny worm known as C. elegans, the nervous system is far simpler, comprising a mere 118 classes of neurons. Robert Horvitz's lab are studying the worms to learn how nervous systems develop.
Koch Professor of Biology at MIT, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His team has discovered that a protein complex called cohesin, which helps shape the three-dimensional structure of the genome in both worms and humans, is critical for establishing some neurons' identities as development unfolds. The open-access findings, reported in the journal Science Advances, could help scientists find a way to treat a rare developmental disorder called Cornelia de Lange syndrome, which is caused by mutations that disrupt the cohesin complex.
MIT postdoc Dongyeop Lee explains that C. elegans is a powerful model for studying neurodevelopment not just because its nervous system has been comprehensively mapped, but also because of the ease and speed with which scientists can study the function of its genes. Because many of the worm's genes have been retained through evolution, findings from studies of C. elegans often reveal important aspects of human biology. The current study began with worms that, because of a genetic mutation, make too many neurons of a certain type.
Adrenergic neurons, named for the kind of neurotransmitter they use to communicate with other neurons, are vital for enabling worms to respond to both their environment and their own internal state. Normally, C. elegans has just two pairs of adrenergic neurons: two RIM neurons and two RIC neurons. But the worms Lee studied had extras of both.
Takashi Hirose, a former member of the Horvitz lab, first observed this change in 2007. Lee later continued the study and discovered that worms carrying a mutation in a gene called coh-1 have extra adrenergic neurons. The coh-1 gene encodes one part of the cohesin complex.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
