Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Minireview cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: A passport to neurotransmitter identity. | X Genome Biology Minireview A passport to neurotransmitter identity Marten P Smidt and J Peter H Burbach Address Neuroscience and Pharmacology University Medical Center Utrecht Universiteitsweg 100 3584 CG Utrecht The Netherlands. Correspondence Martin P Smidt. Email Abstract Comparison of a regulatory network that specifies dopaminergic neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans to the development of vertebrate dopamine systems in the mouse reveals a possible partial conservation of such a network. The human brain is the most complex vertebrate organ consisting of roughly 10-100 billion neurons each with a unique identity in terms of neurotransmitter phenotype anatomical location and connections to other neurons. One of the quests in genome biology is to understand the principles by which the human genome with its limited number of genes generates such highly diverse and yet precisely connected sets of neurons. Addressing a similar issue in the much simpler nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans a recent paper in Nature by Flames and Hobert 1 has revealed a potentially conserved regulatory logic underlying the terminal differentiation of dopaminergic neurons - neurons that secrete the neurotransmitter dopamine. Specification of neuronal neurotransmitter type C. elegans has a well-defined nervous system of 302 neurons in which 118 neuronal types can be distinguished. Six pairs of neurons each originating from four separate lineages use dopamine as a neurotransmitter. Flames and Hobert s starting point in delineating the mechanism by which these different neurons acquire the components for dopaminergic neurotransmission is the concept that the genes required in a functional pathway may be coordinately activated by a single or limited number of transcription factors acting on shared cis-regulatory elements. This basic concept has been discussed for more than 30 years using terms such as realizator genes 2 neuron-type selector genes 3 .
