Early in the development of invertebrate and vertebrate nervous systems,leader neurons lay down an axonal scaffold that follower axons track along. On p. 4999, Bak and Fraser describe an important behavioural difference between leader and follower axons in the developing zebrafish forebrain. By using timelapse fluorescence microscopy to analyse the growth of commissural axons in a living brain, they show that only the leader axons, and not the follower axons,slowed down at the midline. When the leader axons were ablated by laser irradiation, follower axons adopted leader behavioural characteristics. Bak and Fraser also report that the growth cones of leader axons were short and wide, whereas those of followers were more streamlined. They propose that the midline dynamics of commissural axons are determined by both the level of exposure to midline cues and the presence of other axons as a substrate.
Axons play follow the leader
Axons play follow the leader. Development 15 October 2003; 130 (20): e2004. doi:
Download citation file:
Advertisement
Cited by
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.