Neurogenesis -- discovery of a new regulatory mechanism
VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology)
Bassem Hassan’s* team at VIB/KU Leuven has discovered a previously unknown mechanism that is highly conserved between species and which regulates neurogenesis through precise temporal control of the activity of a family of proteins essential for brain development: the proneural proteins. How does a very small set of proteins expressed over a very limited period of time control the generation of such a high and diverse number of neurons? And finally, is this mechanism, which enables the development of the nervous system, conserved between species? How can a protein that auto-activates its own expression disappear at the peak of that expression? These results, confirmed in another experimental model, thus reveal the existence of a mechanism that is both highly conserved between species and universal, and which regulates neurogenesis and the generation of a sufficient and diverse number of neurons during brain development.
Tags:
- Development of the nervous system
- Gene expression
- Nervous system
- Neuron
- Neurogenesis
- Cellular differentiation
- Neural stem cell
- Brain
- Protein
- Stem cell
- Drosophila melanogaster
- Biology
- Cell biology
- Neuroscience
- Biotechnology
- Life sciences
- Biological processes
- Biochemistry
- Molecular biology
- Cellular processes
- Genetics