MECHANISMS OF BRAINSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND DISORDERS

A major challenge for future research is to prevent or cure developmental defects of the central nervous system. The ability of animals and humans to carry out their behavioral repertoires depends critically on how nerves grow and interconnect with each other. The major mechanisms involved in brain malformations are mutations in specific genes that perturb gene expression during sensitive developmental stages. Abnormalities caused by impairments during development can lead to neurological dysfunction that may be evident at birth or become obvious only at later stages in life. Thus, understanding how biological mechanisms take place is a major topic for research, helping us to unravel how the brain is built and how this process can go wrong. The project deals with a sub-population of nerves that innervate some specific targets in the head region and modulate in this way the movement of our muscles and the responses to external stimuli. Because of the complexity of the neuronal network, the chance to get a wrong connection or an inappropriate location can be high. Therefore, learning more on how neurons are born, what makes them move in particular directions, what are the targets that they innervate and how and why some die and other survive, is the basis of finding new therapies and cures on neurological diseases. Our major aim is to understand the reason why a population of neurons that innervate the muscles of the face is located in a specific position and what are the molecules that make them move there during embryonic life. Using genetic models, we will test whether eliminating particular molecules from the neurons themselves or their environment causes defects in the migration. Our previous work had already demonstrated that if we block this movement in an animal model, we get symptoms similar to human paralysis. Searching for main players involved in this movement will benefit patients suffering from palsies and other neurodegenerative diseases.