Gene Identified That Controls Brain Cell Growth

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- There is a fine line between brain cell growth that can lead to tumors, brain cell growth that's normal and brain cell growth that can lead to neuropsychiatric illnesses. Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) have pinpointed one gene that plays a role in drawing that line.

Researchers at UNC at Chapel Hill School of Medicine discovered that the balancing of brain cells rests in large part on single gene, called GSK-3, glycogen synthase kinase 3. GSK-3 controls and coordinates the signals in the brain that determine how many neurons are actually produced.

Investigators removed the gene at a specific time in the development of mouse embryos. That action caused important cells called radial progenitor cells to be stuck in a constant state of proliferation.

“It was really quite striking," senior study author William D. Snider, M.D., professor of neurology and cell and molecular physiology and director of the UNC Neuroscience Center, was quoted as saying. “Without GSK-3, these neural stem cells just keep dividing and dividing and dividing. The entire developing brain fills up with these neural stem cells that never turn into mature neurons."

Researchers are now interested in seeing what happens when the gene is added back to the mice to see if the mutant neurons can be converted to mature neurons, as normal.

SOURCE: Nature Neuroscience, October 4, 2009

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