With a Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Mary Hatten will continue to study the developmental mechanisms of neuronal-glial interactions in the central nervous system. The primary goal of this research is to elucidate the genetic and molecular genetic regulation of neuronal migrations in the developing mammalian brain by employing molecular biological methods and mutant mouse models. An in vitro model system for mouse cerebellar cells has been developed in Dr. Hatten's laboratory to define the cellular and molecular mechanisms of migration. Mutant mice with phenotypic defects, expressed by the weaver gene, in glial-guided migration will be utilized to analyze the genetic regulation of migration. A novel adhesion ligand, astrotactin, has been identified to mediate neuron-glia binding and will be used to describe the molecular components of migration. Functional studies indicate that glial-guided neuronal migration utilizes astrotactin rather than neural cell adhesion molecules. The expression of this ligand will be examined in other brain regions, such as the hippocampus, cortex and subcortical regions and astrotactin cDNAs will be used to clone astrotactin and related genes from cDNA libraries of other brain regions. This work will provide information on the sequence of astrotactin, its structure, function and homology with known proteins.
