![]() ![]() Imagine one Purkinje cell is a tree, Luo explained. Several of these genetic tools were developed in Luo’s lab, like the Mosaic Analysis with Double Marker (MADM) technique, which deletes a gene of interest from isolated single cells and labels those cells with a unique marker. “They look like beautiful trees and there are many genetic tools to study them.” “Purkinje cells are my first love because they were the first mammalian neurons I studied, while I was still a postdoc,” Luo said. For more than two decades his lab has investigated these questions, oftentimes using Purkinje cells, principal neurons in the cerebellum that influence motor and cognitive functions. Luo’s lab specializes in exploring how neural circuits form during development, and how they’re organized to perform specific functions. ![]() So, he decided his lab would be the first to do so. Luo said that, as far as he knew, this theory has never been tested in a developing mammalian brain before. Do dendrites have to exist before synapses can form? Or is the formation of synaptic connections vital for dendritic growth?Īccording to one idea, called the synaptotrophic hypothesis, synapses stabilize dendrites and make them more likely to grow further, while dendrites without synapses are more likely to recede. That’s because how neurons grow is a chicken-and-egg problem, explained Luo. “How does the brain get wired up? How do neural circuits form? These are big, unanswered questions,” Luo said. They also get at fundamental questions in neuroscience, said Luo, the Ann and Bill Swindells Professor in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. The findings, published in February in the journal Neuron, reveal that competitive interactions matter when neurons grow and form circuits. Luo’s team found that the dendrites of growing neurons compete with one another to form connections with their partners, and the presence of successful connections increases the odds of dendrite growth. Like biological antennas, dendrites receive incoming signals from other neurons via connections called synapses. In a first of its kind study, researchers led by Stanford biologist Liqun Luo used genetic experiments and computer models to shed light on two important steps of brain development in young mice: the growth of branching extensions on the bodies of neurons, called dendrites, and the connections that dendrites make with other neurons. A normal Purkinje brain cell (top) and a Purkinje cell with a GluD2 gene mutation (bottom) that affects the ability to make early synaptic connections with neighbors. ![]()
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