The mutation affects a receptor for a signaling molecule
called netrin that is involved in one of the best - studied pathways in developmental neuroscience, she says, but all of that work has been done in animals such as mice, worms, and fruit flies.
Animal studies have suggested that during brain development,
netrin tells growing nerve fibers to cross over to the other side of the brain, and Rouleau speculates that the message might not always get through in people with only one working copy of the DCC receptor.
Although the DCC mutation differs between the Iranian and Canadian families, both mutations result in a truncated receptor protein that can't bind
with netrin, the researchers found.
We thus investigated expression of seven transcription factors (brachyury, foxA, foxD, twist, not, soxD, and soxE), the signaling molecules noggin and hedgehog [chordin appears absent from annelid genomes (8)-RSB-, and the guidance
factors netrin and slit (table S2 for references).
A separate analysis showed a similar drop
in netrin - 1 in affected neurons in rats whose axons from the brain to the spinal cord had been cut.
Zhang, W.; Rajan, I.; Savelieva, K.V.; Wang, C - Y.; Vogel, P.; Kelly, M.; Xu, N.; Hasson, B.; Jarman, W.; Lanthorn, T.H.
Netrin - G2 and netrin - G2 ligand are both required for normal auditory responsiveness.
DCC, encoding
the netrin receptor, which is expressed in dopaminergic neurons.
Cross-repressive interactions between Lrig3 and
netrin 1 shape the architecture of the inner ear.
Powell A., Sassa T., Wu Y.Q., Tessier - Lavigne M., and Polleux F. (2008)
Netrin - 1 specifies the topography of thalamocortical projections in the ventral telencephalon through its attractive and repulsive activities.
Thrombospondin domain architectures are found in Amphimedon; however, agrin,
netrin and perlecan seem to be eumetazoan innovations.
As in vertebrates, the mesodermal midline resembles the neuroectodermal midline, which expresses foxD, foxA,
netrin, slit, and noggin (figs.
S13); (ii) the expression patterns of foxA, noggin, brachyury,
netrin (Fig. 4, B and D, and fig.
She added, «We're a long way off, but we really do hope to translate
this netrin - 1 finding into a new therapy.
Together, these results hinted that
netrin - 1's absence might be a major factor driving neuronal changes after axotomy.