Cloning and Analysis of Neurotrophic Factor Receptors Using Function-based Strategies
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
“Neurotrophic factors” were proposed to exist following the observation, now decades old, that neurons die during normal development. This process of neuronal death, known as programmed or naturally occurring neuronal death, is thought to somehow be involved in the proper wiring of the nervous system. A variety of studies revealed that the amount of neuronal death observed was proportional to the amount of target innervated, leading to the notion that neurons compete for limiting amounts of target-derived neurotrophic activity (Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini 1949; Oppenheim 1981). The ability to assay for neurotrophic activity in vitro allowed the isolation of neurotrophic factors, the first of which was nerve growth factor (NGF) (Levi-Montalcini 1987). The subsequent purification and molecular cloning of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) revealed that it shared about 50% amino acid identity with NGF (Leibrock et al. 1989) and inspired homology-based searches that have yielded additional NGF/BDNF relatives. Members of the...
