Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia Press Releases

Top: Rat neurons. Bottom: Arabidopsis roots. Left: normal neurons and roots. Right: short axons and root hairs caused by atlastin/RHD3 deficiency. Courtesy of Craig Blackstone, NINDS, and John Schiefelbein, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

From Nerve Roots to Plant Roots – Researchers are Gaining Unexpected Insights into Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia

Thursday, Aug 6, 2009

Sprouting. Branching. Pruning. Neuroscientists have borrowed heavily from botanists to describe the way that neurons grow, but analogies between the growth of neurons and plants may be more than superficial. A new study from the National Institutes of Health and Harvard Medical School suggests that neurons and plant root cells may grow using a similar mechanism.