NEURITE OUTGROWTH AND GUIDANCE BY TENASCIN-C

摘要

We developed an assay to quantify neurite behavior at sharp substrate boundaries and found that neurites demonstrated a strong preference for fnA-D when given a choice at a poly-L-lysine/fnA-D interface. Furthermore, neurites preferred cells that over expressed the largest but not the smallest tenascin-C splice variant when given a choice between control cells and cells transfected with tenascin-C. The permissive guidance cues of large tenascin-C expressed by cells were mapped to fnA-D. We demonstrate that neurite outgrowth and guidance are facilitated by distinct sequences within fnA-D. Hence, neurite outgrowth and neurite guidance mediated by the alternatively spliced region of tenascin-C are separable events which can be independently regulated.