The Wilson labs latest paper on one of our favourite structures the parapineal has just been published in eLife. In this work , Ingrid shows that normal function of Sox1a is required for the parapineal to impart left-sided molecular character and efferent connectivity to habenula neurons, despite not being required for the specification and migration of the parapineal itself.
Read this open access paper in eLife:
Sox1a mediates the ability of the parapineal to impart habenular left-right asymmetry. eLife 2019;8:e47376 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.47376
or check out the publication summary.
Authors :Ingrid Lekk, Véronique Duboc, Ana Faro, Stephanos Nicolaou, Patrick Blader, Stephen W Wilson
The parapineal emerges from the pineal during zebrafish embryogenesis, as shown by confocal images of a transgenic line with GFP in the pineal complex (top pictures). The pineal complex lies at the midline of the epithalamus, flanked by left (green on the scheme) and right (magenta on the scheme) habenulae. The habenulae are innervated by the parapineal and themselves send neuronal projections to the midbrain interpeduncular nucleus (IPN). The side of the parapineal, on the left in wild-type (wt), determines which habenula acquires a left-type identity projecting to the dorsal part of the IPN (dIPN).
Congratulations to Ingrid!