References & Sources

Checkpoints keep a growing nerve cell alive

As a nerve fiber grows toward its destination, its survival depends on substances secreted by targets along the way.

References:

Flanagan, J.G. 1999. Life on the road. Nature 401(Oct. 21):747.

Wang, H., and M. Tessier-Lavigne. 1999. En passant neurotrophic action of an intermediate axonal target in the developing mammalian CNS. Nature 401(Oct. 21):765.

Sources:

John G. Flanagan
Harvard Medical School
Department of Cell Biology
Program in Neuroscience
Boston, MA 02115

Marc Tessier-Lavigne
University of California, San Francisco
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Departments of Anatomy and Biochemistry & Biophysics
San Francisco, CA 94143-0452

Hao Wang
Merck Research Laboratories
Sumneytown Pike
P.O. Box 4
West Point, PA 19486

From Science News, Vol. 156, No. 17, October 23, 1999, p. 263. Copyright © 1999, Science Service.