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While its SCA1 studies are providing insights into the motor control involved in balance, Zoghbi's group is also exploring the sensory side of coordination. "When you walk down a hallway, you don't have to look at your feet; you know exactly where they are," says Zoghbi. "Even if you close your eyes, you know where your hands and feet are, because there is continuous sensory feedback to your brain about the position of your limbs." Sensory receptors in the muscles, tendons, joints and inner ear detect motion and position, and they signal the brain through a route known as the proprio-receptive pathway.
To better understand that pathway, Zoghbi followed up on a lead from geneticist Hugo Bellen, another HHMI investigator at Baylor, who called her attention to a line of fruit flies that are uncoordinated because they lack a gene called atonal. This gene controls the development of the chordotonal organs, major sensory organs in the peripheral nervous system of the fly. Collaborating with Bellen, Zoghbi's group found the mouse version of atonal, which is named "Mouse atonal homolog 1" (Math1), and began studying its function.
"What we have found is that Math1 is essential for many components of this pathway, controlling multiple neurons," says Zoghbi. "These neurons are quite different and diverse in their functions, but they're all components of a pathway that does the same thing as the chordotonal organs in the fly." —NRF
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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin,
July 2001, pages 16-19.
©2001 Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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