Biography of Joshua R. Sanes

摘要

During development, nerve cells in the body extend and reach forward, spreading ax-onal tendrils and establishing sensitive connections that ultimately wire the system into a whole. The signals that these nerve cells send and receive to determine the location and specificity of their synapses have captivated the interest of Joshua R. Sanes, recently appointed director of the new interdisciplinary Center for Brain Neu-roscience at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA). Sanes has spent his research career studying the nature of synapse formation from embryological and molecular perspectives, and his work led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. In his Inaugural Article in this issue of PNAS, Sanes and colleagues examined a cluster of genes that helps determine how neuronal connections are formed in the spinal cord (1). The pro-tocadherin (Pcdh) genes play roles in specifying synaptic connectivity, and previous research has shown that mice lacking a certain Pcdh gene cluster have decreased spinal cord synapses and are nearly immobile. However, these results were complicated by the fact that the Pcdh ablation also led to apoptosis of spinal interneurons. In his Inaugural Article study, Sanes and his team circumvented this apoptosis problem by preserving spinal interneurons and demonstrated that Pcdh-mutant mice still have decreased numbers of spinal cord synapses and neurological deficiencies. Their findings thus support the direct role of protocadherins in synaptic development.