Stranger in a Strange Land: Using Heterotopic Transplantations to Study Nature vs Nurture in Brain Development.
Stranger in a Strange Land: Using Heterotopic Transplantations to Study Nature vs Nurture in Brain Development.
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DOI：
10.1177/1179069518758656
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Petros TJ
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文献类型：
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作者：
Petros TJ
哺乳动物的大脑从一片简单的神经上皮细胞发展成一个令人难以置信的复杂结构，包含数十亿个神经元和数万亿个突触。了解内在遗传程序如何与环境线索相互作用以产生神经元多样性和适当的连接是发育生物学中最艰巨的挑战之一。我们最近在前脑GABA能抑制性中间神经元中探索了这个问题，这是一个非常多样化的神经元群体，根据形态学，神经化学标记物和电生理特性分为不同的亚型。从一个大脑区域收集未成熟的中间神经元并移植到另一个区域，使我们能够评估新环境中具有挑战性的细胞如何影响它们的命运。这些移植的细胞是采用了宿主环境的特征，还是保留了供体环境的特征？我们发现，interneuron亚群的比例是由宿主区域，但一些interneuron亚型保持功能归因于供体环境。在这篇评论中，我阐述了这些观察的潜在机制，并在发展神经科学的更大背景下探索这些发现的意义。
The mammalian brain develops from a simple sheet of neuroepithelial cells into an incredibly complex structure containing billions of neurons with trillions of synapses. Understanding how intrinsic genetic programs interact with environmental cues to generate neuronal diversity and proper connectivity is one of the most daunting challenges in developmental biology. We recently explored this issue in forebrain GABAergic inhibitory interneurons, an extremely diverse population of neurons that are classified into distinct subtypes based on morphology, neurochemical markers, and electrophysiological properties. Immature interneurons were harvested from one brain region and transplanted into a different region, allowing us to assess how challenging cells in a new environment affected their fate. Do these grafted cells adopt characteristics of the host environment or retain features from the donor environment? We found that the proportion of interneuron subgroups is determined by the host region, but some interneuron subtypes maintain features attributable to the donor environment. In this commentary, I expound on potential mechanisms that could underlie these observations and explore the implications of these findings in a greater context of developmental neuroscience.