Hormone key to brain development in fruit flies identified
Their discovery -- a fundamental advance for biology and neuroscience, and detailed in a paper published April 10 in the journal eLife -- also may shed new light on maternal hypothyroidism, a human condition in which too little thyroid is produced and is dangerous for pregnant women and their developing babies. In their paper, the UO team, which also included Brandon Mark, a graduate student in biology , tied the hormone ecdysone to a previously unknown sequence of gene expression in Drosophila stem cells. The hormone in the fruit fly is essentially the equivalent of the human thyroid hormone, said the study's lead author Mubarak Hussain Syed, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of co-author Chris Doe. "Our finding is the first example of hormones regulating time-sensitive gene transitions during neurogenesis, and it offers exciting insights into how problems with hormone signaling could be implicated in neurological diseases," Syed said. "During gestation,...