Busy Builders

When you’re constructing roads, you need the right components to arrive in the right places at the right time, or you end up with dead ends. The same goes for building neural networks. Here, building blocks are transported along developing neural projections using motor proteins. One such motor protein, kinesin-1, contains several subunits that are implicated in ensuring the right cargo arrives at the right destination within a neuron. Researchers focus on one subunit, in particular, kinesin light chain 4 (KLC4). Comparing live imaging of normal zebrafish (pictured) and mutants lacking KLC4 – each with fluorescently-tagged spinal neurons – reveals that projections in mutants don't stabilise or grow correctly. Plus in the mutant, projections forming the peripheral nervous system incorrectly behaved like those of the central nervous system by bundling together. KLC4 is, therefore, vital for building neurons and establishing the identity of neurons in the peripheral versus central nervous system.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Video from work by Elizabeth M Haynes and colleagues
• Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, October 2022