The hormone, which is well known for regulating appetite, appears to influence neuronal development—a finding that could shed light on disorders such as autism that involve dysfunctional synapse formation.
Once considered neurotransmission-related noise, scientists now show that the spontaneous release of presynaptic vesicles is imperative for the maturation of Drosophila synapses.
A paper describing a new method for imaging synapse formation has been retracted after it emerged that the first author falsified data to prove its effectiveness.