{"id":781229,"date":"2026-07-24T05:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T05:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/781229\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T05:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T05:20:08","slug":"neuronal-migration-is-risky-dna-breaking-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/781229\/","title":{"rendered":"Neuronal migration is risky, DNA-breaking business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neuronal DNA breaks as the cells migrate during development, though enzymes later fix that damage to preserve function, according to a study<\/a> published in Nature last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDNA damage is something that you think about when you might have an X-ray or when you go flying in a plane,\u201d says David Rowitch<\/a>, deputy director of basic and translational research at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children\u2019s and professor of pediatrics at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study. \u201cWhat people maybe don\u2019t understand as well is [that] during development, there\u2019s a lot of DNA damage that normally occurs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most read <\/p>\n

During human fetal development, neurons travel from the ventricular zone to take up residence elsewhere in the brain and nervous system. This trek \u201cis a risky process; neurons seem to have a very dangerous trip,\u201d says study investigator Mineko Kengaku<\/a>, professor of developmental biology at Kyoto University\u2019s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nuclei of migrating cells can become deformed<\/a> as the cells pass through tight intercellular spaces, previous work shows. In cancer and immune cells, this migration can rupture the nuclear envelope. That doesn\u2019t happen in neuronal nuclei, but they still elongate, rotate and distort during their travels, according to the live-cell imaging presented in the new work.<\/p>\n

Kengaku and her colleagues forced fetal mouse cerebellar granule neurons to squeeze through microfluidic channels etched into a 2D chip, approximating the cells\u2019 journey in vivo. Fluorescent tags marked the cells\u2019 nuclear envelope and DNA damage in distinct colors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the nucleus of each cell is distorted during the cells\u2019 passage, most acquire double-stranded DNA breaks, the study shows. An enzyme called topoisomerase 2-beta covalently binds the breaks, which the cells then mend via non-homologous end-joining using the enzyme ligase 4, the primary mechanism by which cells repair breaks without a template strand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cerebellar granule neurons from mice missing the repairing ligase changed their expression of only 336 genes. These knockout mice developed normally, aside from subtle differences in their motor functions later in life. The results suggest that \u201cDNA damage is inevitable,\u201d Kengaku says, but the neurons have a \u201cmechanism to make the DNA damage in safe genomic regions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neuronal DNA breaks as the cells migrate during development, though enzymes later fix that damage to preserve function,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-781229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}