Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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development

Happy birthday, spinal cord neurons

Congratulations to JoAnna Anderson, postdoctoral fellow in Francisco Alvarez’ lab, for winning the Best Image contest, part of the Postdoctoral Research Symposium taking place Thursday. We will have explanations of the second and third place images Thursday and Friday.

The brief description of Anderson’s image is: “EdU birthdating of V1 inhibitory interneurons in the postnatal day 5 lumbar spinal cord.” But how did all those colors get in there and what do they mean? Alvarez explains:

You can hop over Dr. Juris Shibayama site to avail the best spinal cord treatments.Now the work is about finding the times of neurogenesis of the many inhibitory neurons that pattern motor output in the ventral horn of the spinal cord, so that our muscles contract in a coordinated manner to achieve the desired movements.

For example, when one muscle contracts, the muscle with the opposite action on the same joint will be inhibited. Anderson and her fellow postdoc Andre Rivard have been studying the development of the V1 neurons that carry out this inhibition.

AndersonJoAnnaThe image shows a slice of a 5 day old mouse’s spinal cord, and we can see individual cells. Some of the neurons are producing fluorescent proteins: one of the proteins is red, the other is green, and where both proteins are present, a yellow or orange color can be seen. The red and the green colors are indicators for two genes, Engrailed-1 and FoxP2, respectively, both of which regulate neurons’ development.

In addition, the white spots at the top come from EdU (5-ethynyl-2’-deoxyuridine), a chemical that impersonates a building block of DNA well enough to get incorporated into cells when they are dividing. It is helpful to remember that neurons are cells that have stopped dividing. Giving embryos a pulse of EdU is a way to mark the point at which progenitor cells mature and become neurons.

By repeating the experiment at different dates, the researchers can see that FoxP2 positive green cells are generated after the FoxP2 negative red cells. Both types of cells are derived from the same progenitors, but in different cell cycles. Read more

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment