Rose Pruning

Any good gardener knows that keeping a rosebush in shape requires careful pruning of stray off-shoots. The same is true of these microscopic roses, which are in fact mouse brain cell projections from a study examining the role of a genetic mutation common in people with autism spectrum disorder. Previous work had shown that various forms of the protein ankyrin-B, important for brain cell structure, are affected by mutations in the gene ANK2. This investigation revealed the growing tip of cell projections (red, top left) is typically tamed by a regulatory factor called Sema 3A (usual results shown bottom left). The researchers investigated Sema 3A’s pruning abilities when various forms of ankyrin-B are removed (three right hand images bottom row, with untreated counterparts above), and identified the ankyrin-B forms essential to rigorous regulation of brain cell growth, which may explain a mechanism behind the autism symptoms people experience.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Blake A Creighton and Simone Afriyie, and colleagues
• Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, November 2021