Munich Neuroscience Calendar

Event:

24.11.2017, 12:15 Graduate School of Neuroscience

Event Type: Talk
Speaker: Jonathan Enriquez
Institute: Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon

Title: Neurolunch: "Motoneurons and neuropil glia: Common origins yet divergent modes of development"

Location:
GSN Seminar Room D00.003
Großhaderner Str. 2
82152 Martinsried

Host: Hernan Lopez-Schier and Alexander Kaiser

Abstract:
Neurons and glia are always associated with each other and exist in all bilateria, even in basal phyla such as flatworms (Hartline, 2011). As nervous system complexity increases during evolution, there is an increase in both neuronal and glia diversity (Paredes et al., 2016). In our lab we try to understand the development logic used by these two types of cells which lead to morphological diversity. We have shown that three of the stem cells that produced leg motor neurons in Drosophila also generate a specialized subset of glia, the neuropil glia, which wrap and send processes into the neuropil where motor neuron dendrites arborize. While the MNs use a code of TFs to create diversity and generate individual MNs with a very stereotyped morphology (Enriquez et al., 2015), the post-mitotic glia born from these lineages have not been observed to have a unique molecular code. Contrary to Neurons, the gliogenesis phase of these lineages is plastic and highly adaptable: when gliogenesis in one lineage is compromised, other lineages compensate to maintain the correct number of NG and the overall shape of the glial tissue (unpublished data). Thus, even though NG and MNs come from the same stem cells and generate adult neuromeres with highly stereotyped structures, there are fundamental differences in how these two cell types are morphologically specified.


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