Pioneer axons employ Cajal’s battering ram to enter the spinal cord

Ev L. Nichols and Cody J. Smith ()
Additional contact information
Ev L. Nichols: University of Notre Dame
Cody J. Smith: University of Notre Dame

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Sensory axons must traverse a spinal cord glia limitans to connect the brain with the periphery. The fundamental mechanism of how these axons enter the spinal cord is still debatable; both Ramon y Cajal’s battering ram hypothesis and a boundary cap model have been proposed. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we visualized the entry of pioneer axons into the dorsal root entry zone (DREZ) with time-lapse imaging in zebrafish. Here, we identify that DRG pioneer axons enter the DREZ before the arrival of neural crest cells at the DREZ. Instead, actin-rich invadopodia in the pioneer axon are necessary and sufficient for DREZ entry. Using photoactivable Rac1, we demonstrate cell-autonomous functioning of invasive structures in pioneer axon spinal entry. Together these data support the model that actin-rich invasion structures dynamically drive pioneer axon entry into the spinal cord, indicating that distinct pioneer and secondary events occur at the DREZ.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08421-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-08421-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08421-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().