Cluster of Excellence NeuroCure, Neuroscience Research Center, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch, Robert-Rössle-Str. 10, 13125 Berlin, Germany.
Development. 2019 Jul 10;146(13):dev180422. doi: 10.1242/dev.180422.
Type I and type II classical cadherins constitute a family of cell adhesion molecules expressed in complex combinatorial profiles in the nervous system, suggesting that a cadherin code implements specific adhesive recognition events that control the development of neural circuits. In the spinal cord, classical cadherins define at a molecular level the positional organization of motor neuron subtypes into discrete nuclear structures termed motor pools. However, the roles and contributions of different members of the family in defining motor neuron spatial organization are not yet clear. By combining mouse genetics with quantitative positional analysis, we found that motor neuron organization into pools depends on type II cadherins. Type II cadherin function, however, does not strictly reflect the predictions arising from binding specificities at a molecular level, but instead relies on N-cadherin, a type I cadherin whose elimination is required to reveal type II contributions.
I 型和 II 型经典钙黏蛋白构成了细胞黏附分子家族，在神经系统中以复杂的组合模式表达，这表明钙黏蛋白代码实现了特定的黏附识别事件，控制着神经回路的发育。在脊髓中，经典钙黏蛋白在分子水平上定义了运动神经元亚型到称为运动池的离散核结构的位置组织。然而，家族中不同成员在定义运动神经元空间组织中的作用和贡献尚不清楚。通过将小鼠遗传学与定量位置分析相结合，我们发现运动神经元的池状组织依赖于 II 型钙黏蛋白。然而，II 型钙黏蛋白的功能并不严格反映分子水平上结合特异性所产生的预测，而是依赖于 N-钙黏蛋白，一种 I 型钙黏蛋白，其消除是揭示 II 型钙黏蛋白贡献所必需的。
