Peripheral nerve injury markedly regulates expression of neurotrophins and their receptors in the lesioned nerve. However, the role of endogenously produced neurotrophins in the process of nerve regeneration is unclear. Expression of a multifunctional neurotrophin, panneurotrophin-1 (PNT-1), was targeted to the peripheral nerves of transgenic mice by using a gene promoter that is specifically a...

Work early in the last century emphasized the stereotyped activity of spinal circuits based on studies of reflexes. However, the last several decades have focused on the plasticity of these spinal circuits. These considerations began with studies of the effects of monoamines on descending and reflex circuits. In recent years new classes of compounds called growth factors that are found in perip...

The neurotrophins are members of a family of structurally and functionally related neurotrophic factors that control the development and maintenance of vertebrate neurons. The crystal structure of nerve growth factor (NGF), the prototypic member of this family, contains three pairs of anti-parallel beta-strands connected by beta-hairpin loops, which contain most of the variable residues among t...

PURPOSE The neurotrophins brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) are hypothesized to play an important role in vertebrate eye development because of their patterned expression in the developing and adult neuroretina, their regulated response to retinal and optic nerve injury, and the effects of altered neurotrophin signaling on retinal development. To further charact...

Recent observations suggest that neurotrophins are involved in activity-dependent plasticity of the developing cerebral cortex. What molecular mechanisms underlie activity-dependent competition between axons for trophic factors?

Since the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) in the 1950s and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the 1980s, a great deal of evidence has mounted for the roles of neurotrophins (NGF; BDNF; neurotrophin-3, NT-3; and neurotrophin-4/5, NT-4/5) in development, physiology, and pathology. BDNF in particular has important roles in neural development and cell survival, as well as appearing ...

and trkC null mutant mice display loss of large diameter parvalbumin-positive neurons, loss of spinal projections from muscle afferents, and severe movement abnormalities. These features are consistent with the hypothesis that TrkC neurons convey proprioceptive information (Ernfors et An important organizational principle of the developing al., 1994b; Fariñ as et al., 1994; Klein et al., 1994)....