Think before you speak
A gene best known for its role in enabling speech and language also controls how brains are wired. The latest research, led by Dr Sonja Vernes and Dr Simon Fisher of the University of Oxford in England, reveals that Foxp2 acts as a genetic dimmer switch, turning up or down the amount of protein product made by nerve cells.
A gene best known for its role in enabling speech and language also controls how brains are wired.
The latest research, led by Dr Sonja Vernes and Dr Simon Fisher of the University of Oxford in England, reveals that Foxp2 acts as a genetic dimmer switch, turning up or down the amount of protein product made by nerve cells.
“Foxp2 directly and indirectly regulates networks of genes that alter the length and branching of neuronal projections,” write researchers in the online journal PLOS Genetics.
What is Foxp2?
In humans, Foxp2 is implicated in speech and language disorders; in birds it influences their ability to learn songs; and in mice it affects learning of rapid movement sequences.
“Studies like this are crucial for building bridges between genes and complex aspects of brain function,” researchers say.
The data will confirm suspicions that people who are affected by Foxp2 mutations have much broader speech problems than those attributed to verbal dyspraxia – the coordinating of mouth movements required to make sounds.
Brain tissue from mouse embryos were analysed and researchers found Foxp2 controls several hundred genes, many of which influence connections between nerve cells.
The researchers were also able to demonstrate in vivo (experimentation using a whole, living organism as opposed to a partial or dead organism) that the loss of Foxp2 affects certain genes central to brain development and that the levels of the gene vary in different parts of the brain.
To further explore the function of Foxp2, researchers studied cultured nerve cells from embryonic mice that contain an alteration in the gene.
They showed these cells had fewer and shorter neurites, spike-like projections that extend from the nerve cell.
Dr Jan Fullerton, of Neuroscience Research Australia, says the results and studies of other early neurodevelopmental genes show “altering the timing or level of expression of a single neurodevelopmental gene can have major implications on how neuronal connections are formed, affecting synaptic plasticity and the way that brain functions later in life”.
Synaptic plasticity is the ability of the connection between two neurons to change in strength.
