Brand-new work from the laboratory of Dr. Frédéric Charron, Director of the Molecular Biology of Neural Development Research Unit at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM), published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, has identified the essential role of a protein in cell function. This fundamental work, carried out jointly with Dr. Xuecai Ge's team at the University of California at Merced, opens the door to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying certain pathologies.
What is it about?
Most of our body's cells have a structure called the "primary cilium", or simply "cilium". This structure acts like an antenna, responsible for detecting signals in the cell's environment. Some of these signals are responsible for stimulating cell proliferation.
In this work, the team of Dr. Charron (who is also a Full Professor in the Department of Medicine at Université de Montréal) and their collaborators identified a protein (called Numb), that is essential for the cilium to transmit an external signal for proliferation to the rest of the cell.
Without the Numb protein, the signal is detected by the cilium but its information is not transmitted to the rest of the cell, preventing its effect from taking place.
Why it's important?
In this case, this signal is a protein that induces cell proliferation. So, in the absence of Numb, proliferation of certain brain cells does not occur. This work is important because it demonstrates a new aspect of what is required for the cilium to transmit signals to the rest of the cell.
When the transmission of the signal received by the cilium is disrupted, defects in brain development such as cerebellar hypoplasia can occur, as observed by Dr. Charron's team in mouse models.
"Subsequent work will enable us to study this ciliary role of Numb in disease in greater detail, ultimately paving the way for new therapies," said Dr. Patricia Yam, co-first author of the study and senior research associate at the IRCM.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Sabrina Schlienger, Wei-Ju Chen and Dr. Vanesa Jimenez Amilburu also contributed to this work in the Charron laboratory.
Dr. Charron holds the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neurobiology. This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Brain Canada-Weston Foundation and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
