The seminar is sponsored by NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai.
Abstract:
Dendritic spines are postsynaptic compartments of excitatory synapses that undergo dynamic changes during development, including rapid spinogenesis in early postnatal life and significant pruning during adolescence. Spine pruning defects have been implicated in developmental neurological disorders such as autism, yet much remains to be uncovered regarding its molecular mechanism. Here, we showed that spine pruning and maturation in the mouse somatosensory cortex are coordinated via cadherin/catenin cell adhesion complexes and bidrectionally regulated by sensory experience. We further demonstrated in cultured neurons that locally enhancing cadherin/catenin-dependent adhesion or photostimulating a contacting channelrhodopsin-expressing axon stabilized the manipulated spine and eliminated its neighbors. Importantly, beta-catenin overexpression in vivo in a subset of presynaptic axons enhanced survival of the spine contacting the beta-catenin overexpressing axon, at the expense of its beta-catenin deprived neighbor. Finally, both EE-induced acceleration of spine pruning and spine maturation were abolished in the absence of endogenous beta-catenin. Together, these results demonstrate that activity-induced interspine competition for beta-catenin provides specificity for concurrent spine maturation and elimination, and thus is critical for the molecular control of spine pruning during neural circuit refinement.
Biography:
Xiang Yu is Senior Investigator and laboratory head at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Shanghai, China. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, she completed her Ph.D at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and her post-doctoral work at Stanford University. Her laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular mechanism underlying experiencedependent neural circuit formation and plasticity. She is recipient of the Grass Fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory (2005), the Hundred Talent Program of the Chinese Academy of Science (2005), the Talented Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation of China (2011), the Shanghai Talented Young Scientist Award (2014), and the China Young Women Scientists’ Award (2014).