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Olfactory Paper

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LEHMAN COLLEGE
BIO 320: NEURAL DEVELOPMENT December 22nd, 2015
ABDUL BAIS AHMED
Problem: Role of Retinoic acid in central nervous development
Olfactory neurons are chemosensory neurons whose role is fulfilled by maintaining direct contact with the outside environment, which sometimes expose them to harm. As a result, there is the need to have a source of progenitor to replenish the damaged cells. It’s widely known that olfactory epithelium (OE) regenerates and replaces damaged olfactory neurons in the vertebrates’ lifetime. OE is derived from olfactory placode (OP) and is composed of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs), non-neural cells as well their progenitors. It is located in the non-neural ectoderm anterior tip of the embryo. ORN …show more content…

This means that even though the RA provides a source of signaling for induction of olfactory precursors, induction can nevertheless occur without input of RA signaling. Does that means there are other factors/molecules that served as back-up signals to RA such that its ablation shows no observable consequence with regards to induction of ORN? Again, the suppression of RA synthesis had no effect on fgf8 expression. The importance of this finding is that, future research can investigate the particular signaling molecules that replenishes RA’s role when it is …show more content…

However manipulations like mutation, knockout and overexpression of genes either re-affirm their role or prove otherwise. I therefore recommend that such manipulations be utilized in future works to throw more light on the different outcomes that relate to those manipulations with regards to the OE progenitors
The understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning the functions of most signaling molecules had been shrouded in complexity and RA is no exception. It takes detailed research work to unravel these mysteries. This research paper did a yeoman’s job by shedding more light on the complex molecular mechanism involving the role of RA signal in the cell division and proliferation of olfactory progenitors in the central nervous system. Balmer JE, Blomhoff R: Gene expression regulation by retinoic acid. J Lipid Res 2002,

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