Anderson Lab ~ Introduction
The nervous system performs the most complex tasks of any organ system and understanding how it develops is one of the most challenging tasks in modern biology. During nervous system development: (1) precursor cells differentiate into either neurons or glial cells, (2) neurons extend an axon to another neuron or to a peripheral target, and (3) the neurons adopt a phenotype appropriate for that target.
Understanding neuronal pathfinding and control of neuron phenotype is made even more pertinent by the huge efforts being expended on developing stem cells to replace neurons in humans with neurological problems. It is pointless to generate new neurons from stem cells if we cannot control their connectivity and phenotype.
We study autonomic neurons to determine how they adopt their mature forms during development and come to take up the appropriate role in the nervous system. Autonomic neurons are accessible and well studied cells that have been crucial in understanding many aspects of neurobiology. We are interested in how an autonomic neuron makes choices during development about which phenotype to adopt and how these phenotypic choices relate to events earlier in the neurons life. We are also interested in the origin of the glial cells of the autonomic ganglia, as they must differentiate in the face of signals that drive most of the other cells in the ganglia to differentiate as neurons. We use approaches that are centred on using developing mice as models. We exploit a diverse range of techniques, including multilabel immunofluorescence, confocal microscopy, time-lapse imaging tissue and organ culture and transgenic animals.
Composite false colour image of a quail embryo with the neural tube and migrating neural crest cells labelled with a virus vector expressing GFP. Image © CR Anderson