INNERVATION OF TARGET-IDENTIFIED SYMPATHETIC NEURONS

作为一名新任命的助理教授，我现在的职业生涯 目标是让一个强大的研究项目在我的 实验室。我的智力兴趣在于理解 自主神经系统中的特异性机制及其机制 这些机制出现在发展过程中。因此我的长期 职业目标是发展一个强大的实验室，致力于 阐明神经生物学的这些方面。美国商务部 佛蒙特大学的解剖学和神经生物学是 追求这些目标的绝佳场所自有实力 是一个跨专业的方法，包括 探索与自主神经相关的问题的几个实验室 系统。此外，还有一个强大的自主研究部分 在药理学、生理学和心理学系。 自主神经系统的复杂性，特别是 中枢神经间神经节中继器的插入 系统和外围设备，排除了任何轻松确定 参与自主神经差动控制的神经回路 功能。拟议的实验通过以下方式绕过了这个问题 为研究靶标识别的神经支配提供了一种方法 神经节细胞或节前神经元。方法是将标签 通过放置逆行运输的特定神经元组 荧光染料进入他们的目标。被逆行标记的个体 然后，在直视下，神经元被填充在细胞内 对照，用标记酶辣根过氧化物酶(HRP) 勾勒出它们的树枝状树枝。免疫组织化学和 靶标识别、HRP填充的电子显微镜分析 单元格将确定特定类型的输入是否相关 神经节或节前的特殊功能 水平。这些实验的意义在于它们 有可能提供对化学本质的基本洞察 自主神经系统中的特定相互作用。

As a newly-appointed assistant professor my immediate career objective is to get a strong research program going in my laboratory. My intellectual interest is in understanding mechanisms of specificity in the autonomic nervous system and how those mechanisms arise during development. Thus my long-term career objective is to develop a strong lab committed to elucidating these aspects of neurobiology. The Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Vermont is an excellent place for the pursuit of these goals since the strength of the department lies in a multi-disciplinary approach with several labs exploring questions relevant to the autonomic nervous system. Moreover, there is a strong autonomic research component in the departments of Pharmacology, Physiology and Psychology. The complexity of the autonomic nervous system, in particular the interposition of a ganglionic relay between the central nervous system and the periphery, precludes any easy determination of the neural circuitry involved in the differential control of autonomic functions. The proposed experiments circumvent this problem by providing a way to study the innervation of target-identified ganglion cells or preganglionic neurons. The approach is to label specific neuronal groups by placing a retrogradely transported fluorescent dye in their target. Individual retrogradely labeled neurons are then intracellularly filled, under direct visual control, with the marking enzyme horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to delineate their dendritic arborizations. Immunohistochemical and electron microscopic analysis of target-identified, HRP-filled cells will determine whether specific types of inputs are related to particular functions at either the ganglionic or preganglionic level. The significance of these experiments lies in their potential for providing basic insight into the chemical nature of specific interactions in the autonomic nervous system.