Differentiating neurons in the embryonic spinal cord abscise their apical tips to detach from the ventricular surface.COURTESY OF RAMAN DASIn the early stages of vertebrate development, the precursors to neurons must leave their nursery at the apical surface of the neural tube and navigate to their new home in the growing nervous system where they will become differentiated neurons. Researchers report today (January 9) in Science on a newly identified means of accomplishing this detachment, one that involves cells lopping off a portion of themselves and leaving it behind—a procedure the group dubbed “apical abscission.”
“Certainly no one had seen this apical abscission before to my knowledge, and it’s a new kind of abscission process,” said William Harris, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge who did not participate in the study.
Harris said the process of apical abscission accomplishes two things: it releases the cell from the apical side of the neural tube, and it leaves behind the proliferative signals associated with the primary cilium. “Knocking off just this tiny part of the cell is a cool way to get these two issues sorted at the same time,” Harris told The Scientist.
Kate Storey of the University of Dundee in the U.K. and her colleague used time-lapse microscopy to observe neurogenesis in slices of embryonic chicken spinal cords. The ...
