15. cacner and developmental biology Flashcards
how many neurons are in the adult brain?
80 billion
give three ways that neurons can differ from one another
- neurotransmitters
- morphology
- receptors
when a stem cells divides what can it become?
another stem cell
a daughter cells - with less potential
why is very important to have self-renewal and differentiation balanced?
- too much self renewal and not enough differentiation - large tissue, hyperplasia, tumour formation
- too much differentiation and not enough self-renewal - reduced nervous system, small head and impaired tissue maintenance
when do NSC originate in Drosophila development?
in the embryo
what happens 4 or 5 hours in Drosophila development?
there is delamination of NSC from epithelial layer around embryo
>NSC undergo asymmetric division
when NSC undergo asymmetric division - what do they become?
another stem cells and a GMC (ganglion mother cell)
what do GMC tend to do?
divide once more to produce either neurones or glia
what from the epithelial layer of cells is translated into the epithelial layer?
the polarity - proteins at the apical cortex and proteins a the basal cortex
why is there asymmetric division
due to the components inherited by cells and the size of the cell
which cells is smaller: the NSC or the GMC?
the GMC
out of the apical and basal factors, which influence self-renewal and which influence differentiation?
> apical factors are important in maintaining self-renewal
>basal factors influence differentiation
what is asymmetrically segregated into GMC?
prospero - transcription factor that is held in the basal cortex of neural stem cells
what NSC divides and GMC is produced, what happens?
prospero is released from cortex and enters the nucleus
what is prospero key in?
key factor in switching the NSC from a self-renewing state to a differentiation state
what does CHIP stand for and what does it identify?
chromatin immuno-precipitation
>find where TF bind in genome
how does CHIP work?
cross link DNA with TF and pull down with antibody
>use microarray/next gen seq to identify sequence
what technique can be used to map protein-DNA interaction in vivo? and give a benefit of this
DamID - DNA adenine methyltransferase Identification
>does not require antibodies
how does DamID work?
> protein of interest fused to E coli enzyme that methylates adenines at specific sites
express at low level
where protein binds will methylate adenine
v little methyl adenine in DNA to interfere with results
cut out methyl adenine using enzymes that cut these locations
amplify and determine sequence
what sort of genes does prospero bind? and how was this determined?
it binds and represses cell cycle genes and NSC genes and activates differentiation genes
>DamID and comparing expression level with prospero mutants
where does prospero binds?
strongly to the intergenic regions of cyclin E genes
In terms of cancer, what is prospero?
a tumour suppresser
what is seen in prospero mutants and what can this lead to?
continue to self-renew and do not differentiate - keep dividing with no queues to differentiate
>this can lead to tumours
why are MARCM (mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker) models useful?
you can make clones of cells during development that are mutants and label them with GFP, if entire embryo was mutant then it would die as embryo
prospero MARCM showed tumour formation in mice brains, these cells are dividing but are they really cancerous?
take cells and put them into abdomen of other fly - these tumours undergo metastasis
>tumours can be serial transplanted for at least two years
describe the protocol used to determine what was working with prospero to repress NSC genes and promote differentiation genes
> extract sequence from prospero binding regions
filter non-exonic regions and conserved sequences
top hit = palindrome, that looks nothing like prospero binding sequence i.e. suggests another factor binds near prospero