Follow the Signs

Following the signs on a motorway spaghetti junction is hard enough, so how do developing neurons [brain cells] know where to go to weave the complex network of the human brain? Receptor proteins steer them towards or from signals in the environment. One example is the Robo receptor which reacts to the Slit signal. The course change is performed by the actin cytoskeleton (highlighted blue in the neuron pictured), which gives cells their structure. Researchers examined how Robo guides the skeleton in fruit flies, and found that it binds to Slit on the outside of the cell, and simultaneously to a complex inside the cell, which in turn rearranges the cytoskeleton. If this complex is disrupted, developing neurons can’t find their way. Robo and Slit can also be involved in cancer development when things go wrong, so revealing how they interact could mean progress in more directions than one.

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 Karina Chaudhari and colleagues
• Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, April 2021