This the spinal cord and removed netrin

This article is focused on Netrin1 factorand how it affects development of axons in the embryonic spinal cords of mice.Netrin1 is found in both the floor plate of the spinal cord and in neuralprogenitor cells in the ventricular zone. This study aims to discover thesource of netrin1 responsible for guiding axon growth. They picked differentareas of the spinal cord and removed netrin from those areas.

Used a controlgroup, a Gli2 (key transcriptional regulator that affects SHH signaling) mutantgroup and a Gli2 and netrin1 double mutant in the floorplate  and found that axon deficiencies in netrin1mutants don’t come from a loss of netrin1 in the floorplate. Next wanted to seeif removing netrin1 in the ventricular zone would result to the same thing.Their experiments showed that the axonal growth defects seen in the mutantswere due to the loss of netrin1 in the ventricular zone and not the floorplate. Concluded that netrin1 derived from the ventricular zone works withlaminin to act as a growth factor for the axons.