Superior cervical ganglia of postnatal mice with a targeted disruption of the gene for neurotrophin-3 have 50% fewer neurons than those of wild-type mice. In culture, neurotrophin-3 increases the survival of proliferating sympathetic precursors. Both precursor death (W. ElShamy et al., 1996, Development 122, 491-500) and, more recently, neuronal death (S. Wyatt et al., 1997, EMBO J. 16, 3115-31...

Schwann cells are attractive candidates for repair of the injured spinal cord. Transplanted Schwann cells are permissive to regeneration, but their ability to promote regeneration into distal spinal cord remains weak despite their production of growth-promoting neurotrophins. Schwann cell activation such as that which accompanies peripheral nerve injury results in massive upregulation of the p7...

Recent studies have established that neurotrophin synthesis and secretion are regulated by activity and that these factors are involved in activity-dependent processes in the nervous system. Neurotrophins also are known to induce increases in intracellular calcium, a trigger for regulated secretion. This finding raises the possibility that neurotrophins themselves may stimulate regulated secret...

The mechanisms by which neurotrophins regulate growth cone motility are unclear. We investigated the role of the p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) in mediating neurotrophin-induced increases in filopodial length. Our data demonstrate that neurotrophin binding to p75NTR is necessary and sufficient to regulate filopodial dynamics. Furthermore, retinal and dorsal root ganglion growth cones from p...

NEUROTROPHIN EXPRESSION IN SYMPATHETIC NEURONS: INFLUENCES OF EXOGENOUS NGF AND AFFERENT INPUT by Elizabeth Ellen Jones The regulatory mechanisms that promote the survival of adult neurons remain unclear. Targetderived proteins called neurotrophins are known to play a role in the survival of sympathetic neurons, but their exact function is unknown. In the present study, expression of the neurot...

Background. The role of recently discovered neurospecific peptides in the pathogenesis acute and progressive neurologic disorders, their neuroprotective features, possibilities to use them as markers for course prognosis certain diseases have been actively studied recent decades. However, are almost not chronic residual diseases. In our study we measured levels some other achieve understanding ...

Neurotrophins are important regulators of visual cortical plasticity. It is still unclear, however, whether they play similar or different roles and which are their effects on the electrical activity of cortical neurons in vivo. We therefore compared the effects of all neurotrophins, nerve growth factor (NGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin-4 (NT-4), and neurotrophin-3 (...

The neurotrophins nerve growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and neurotrophin-3 are structurally related proteins regulating the number of neurons in peripheral ganglia of the nervous system. Increased levels of nerve growth factor or of brain-derived neurotrophic factor selectively prevent normally occurring neuronal death, while the targeted elimination of all three genes decrease...

Nerve growth factor (NGF) represents a family of structurally related trophic factors, including brain-derived neurotrophin factor (BDNF), neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), NT-4, and NT-5. These neurotrophin factors interact with two classes of receptors, the trk receptor tyrosine kinase family, and the low affinity p75 neurotrophin receptor. To study potential ligand-receptor interactions, recombinant tr...

Brain and spinal injury reduce mobility and often impair sensorimotor processing in the spinal cord leading to spasticity. Here, we establish that complete transection of corticospinal pathways in the pyramids impairs locomotion and leads to increased spasms and excessive mono- and polysynaptic low threshold spinal reflexes in rats. Treatment of affected forelimb muscles with an adeno-associate...