Gene interactions in the specification of lens and olfactory progenitors

进化过程中最令人惊奇的发明之一是形成了能够探测声音、气味和光线的复杂器官/眼睛、耳朵和鼻子。这些器官的发展给了动物一个比其他动物更大的优势，因为它使它们能够寻找食物，躲避敌人，甚至在没有方向感和光、声音和气味等线索的情况下，彼此交流/活动非常困难，如果不是不可能的话。在具有这种探测系统的最原始的动物中，它们从头到尾分布在身体的整个表面。然而，在更高级的动物中，比如人类，它们集中在头部，形成中继站，将外部世界的信息传递到我们的大脑。这些器官是如何在正确的时间和地点在胚胎中发育的？为什么它们集中在头部？是什么使它们总是以同样的排列形成？在发育初期，胚胎由三层细胞组成，这些细胞将形成成人身体的不同部位。产生感觉器官的细胞与皮肤和大脑来自同一层。他们怎么知道是形成感觉器官，大脑还是皮肤？如果是感觉器官，它们怎么知道要制造哪一个呢？这些决定大多是在发育的早期做出的，并通过细胞内的分子来调节，这些分子控制着哪些基因会活跃，哪些基因会保持沉默。这些分子可以被称为“调节器”。在鼻子中制造嗅觉细胞的细胞与在眼睛中制造感光结构的细胞含有一组不同的调节因子。“调控码”决定了细胞的身份。在过去10年左右的时间里，人们发现苍蝇和脊椎动物中控制感觉器官形成的一些调节因子非常相似，甚至完全相同。这就产生了一个令人着迷的假设：尽管不同动物的这些器官的结构和功能大不相同，但控制它们发育的分子可能非常相似。为了理解形成眼睛和鼻子的细胞是如何与相邻的细胞以及彼此之间的细胞变得不同的，我们需要了解调节因子是如何工作的。我们正在计划的项目是研究扁虫、苍蝇和脊椎动物感觉器官中存在的一些调节因子。这些调节因子是如何共同作用赋予细胞特定的身份的？如何控制监管机构？是什么分子控制着它们的“开启”和“关闭”？了解这些基本原理将有助于我们了解细胞在正常发育过程中的行为，我们如何使干细胞向特定方向分化，如何修复老化的细胞，以及动物如何从失明和失聪的生物发展成具有感知环境信号的惊人能力的动物。

One of the most amazing inventions during evolution was the formation of complicated organs that can detect sound, smell and light / eyes, ears and noses. The development of these organs gave animals a major advantage over others because it allowed them to hunt for food, to avoid enemies, and even to communicate with each other / activities that are very difficult, if not impossible, without a sense of direction and cues like light, sound and smell to guide. In the most primitive forms of animals that possess such detection systems they are distributed over the entire surface of the body from head to tail. However, in more advanced animals / like in human beings / they are concentrated in the head and form relay stations transmitting information from our outside world to our brain. How do these organs develop in the embryo at the right time and at the right place? Why are they concentrated in the head? What makes them form always in the same arrangement? At the beginning of development, the embryo consists of three sheets of cells that will form different parts of the adult body. Cells that give rise to sense organs come from the same layer as the skin and the brain. How do they know whether to form a sense organ, the brain or the skin? And if a sense organ, how do they know which one to make? Most of these decisions are made very early in development and are regulated through molecules inside the cell that control which genes will be active and which ones remain silent. The molecules can be called 'regulators'. Cells that will make the smell-sensing cells in the nose contain a different set of regulators than those that will make the light-sensing structures in the eye. A 'regulator-code' determines the identity of a cell. In the last 10 years or so, it has been discovered that some of the regulators that control the formation of sense organs in the fly and in vertebrates are very similar or even identical. This has led to the fascinating hypothesis that although the structure of these organs and the way they function are quite different in different animals, the molecules that control their development may be very similar. To understand how cells that form the eye and nose become different from their neighbours and from each other, we will need to understand how the regulators work. The project we are planning investigates some of the regulators that are present in sense organs of flatworms, flies and vertebrates. How do these regulators work together to give a cell a particular identity? How are the regulators controlled? What are the molecules that switch them 'on' and 'off'? Understanding these basic principles will help us to understand how cells behave during normal development, how we can make stem cells differentiate into particular directions, how to repair aging cells and also how animals developed from blind and deaf creatures into forms with amazing abilities to sense signals from the environment.