NEUR 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Intellectual Disability, Body Plan, Hox Gene

• School: McGill University
• Department: Neurology and Neurosurgery
• Course: NEUR 310
• Professor: Jean- Francois Cloutier

Document Summary

Molecular pathway of neural induction: very early on, you need induction of the neural plate to give rise of the neural tube, from there comes the neurons. Patterning the rostral-caudal axis of the neural tube. The neural plate must first be patterned into neural tissue that will give rise to rostral (brain) and caudal (spinal cord) structures of the nervous system: neural tissue induced by chordin, noggin, and. Hox genes: hox genes encode homeodomain-containing transcription factors. First discovered in flies but conserved among species. Their overlapping expression in segments of the hindbrain and spinal cord specifies rostral-caudal axis formation. Some cells more posteriorly will express certain members of the hox gene family while the more anterior cells will express other types of hox genes: expressed in overlapping segments of the hindbrain and spinal cord. Four hox gene clusters in mouse and humans. The organization of hox genes within the clusters reflect their rostral-caudal expression in the body plan.