Abstract
GROWING retinal axons home to their distant target, the tectum, even when they are displaced from their normal pathway1. This argues for long-range guidance mechanisms in the embryonic brain. Growth cones may orientate to diffusible attractants released from the target, as proposed in other systems2,3,or they may use a stable distribution of positional information in the neuroepithelium1. To distinguish between these possibilities, small pieces of the presumptive optic tract, through which retinal axons will normally grow, were rotated by ∼90° either clockwise or counterclockwise. When the retinal axons later encountered the rotated neuroepithelium, they also turned clockwise or counterclockwise, in correspondence with the direction of rotation. This demonstrates that long-range navigation of retinal axons in the vertebrate brain is based partly on stable, local positional factors, rather than on remote diffusible factors.
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Harris, W. Local positional cues in the neuroepithelium guide retinal axons in embryonic Xenopus brain. Nature 339, 218–221 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/339218a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/339218a0
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