Guidance of Developing Axons by Netrin-1 and Its Receptors
- E.D. Leonardo1,
- L. Hinck1,
- M. Masu1,
- K. Keino-Masu1,2,
- A. Fazeli3,
- E. T. Stoeckli1,
- S.L. Ackerman4,
- R.A. Weinberg3, and
- M. Tessier-Lavigne1
- 1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Departments of Anatomy and of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Programs in Cell and Developmental Biology and Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143; 2Department of Physiology, National Defense Medical College, Saitama 359, Japan; 3Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142; 4The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The establishment of neuronal connections involves the accurate guidance of developing axons to their targets through the combined actions of attractive and repulsive cues in the extracellular environment. Accumulating evidence has indicated the importance of long-range mechanisms for axon guidance, involving diffusible chemoattractants secreted by target cells that attract axons to their targets, and diffusible chemorepellents secreted by non-target cells that generate exclusion zones which axons avoid (Tessier-Lavigne and Goodman 1996). Two recently identified families of guidance molecules, the netrins and semaphorins, can function as diffusible attractants or repellents for developing axons, but the receptors and signal transduction mechanisms through which they produce their effects are poorly understood (Goodman 1996).
The netrins comprise a phylogenetically conserved family of long-range guidance cues related to the extracellular matrix molecule laminin, with members implicated in attraction and repulsion of axons in Caenorhabditis elegans (Ishii et al. 1992), in vertebrates (Kennedy et al. 1994;...
