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Diversity of Mammalian Motoneurons and Motor Units

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Part of the book series: Advances in Neurobiology ((NEUROBIOL,volume 28))

Abstract

Although they share the common function of controlling muscle fiber contraction, spinal motoneurons display a remarkable diversity. Alpha-motoneurons are the “final common pathway”, which relay all the information from spinal and supraspinal centers and allow the organism to interact with the outside world by controlling the contraction of muscle fibers in the muscles. On the other hand, gamma-motoneurons are specialized motoneurons that do not generate force and instead specifically innervate muscle fibers inside muscle spindles, which are proprioceptive organs embedded in the muscles. Beta-motoneurons are hybrid motoneurons that innervate both extrafusal and intrafusal muscle fibers. Even among alpha-motoneurons, there exists an exquisite diversity in terms of motoneuron electrical and molecular properties, physiological and structural properties of their neuromuscular junctions, and molecular and contractile properties of the innervated muscle fibers. This diversity, across species, across muscles, and across muscle fibers in a given muscle, underlie the vast repertoire of movements that one individual can perform.

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Acknowledgments

MB is supported by National Science Centre 2017/26/D/NZ7/00728. MM and DZ are supported by NIH-NINDS R01NS110953, the Thierry Latran Foundation project “TRiALS”, Association pour la Recherche sur la SLA et autres maladies du motoneurone (ARSLA), the Association Française contre les Myopathies (AFM) project “HYPERTOXIC”, Radala Foundation for ALS Research, and Programme Hubert Curien “Polonium” for scientific exchanges. MM would like to thank Alexandra Elbakyan for her help with bibliography. FR is supported by the Thierry Latran Foundation (projects “Trials” and “Hypothals”), by the Radala Foundation, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of the SFB1149 and with the individual grant no. 431995586 (RO-5004/8-1) and no. 443642953 (RO5004/9-1), by the Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms in Aging (CEMMA) Research Training Group and by BMBF (FKZ 01EW1705A, as member of the ERANET-NEURON consortium “MICRONET”).

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Correspondence to Marin Manuel .

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Bączyk, M., Manuel, M., Roselli, F., Zytnicki, D. (2022). Diversity of Mammalian Motoneurons and Motor Units. In: O'Donovan, M.J., Falgairolle, M. (eds) Vertebrate Motoneurons. Advances in Neurobiology, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07167-6_6

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