MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF DIRECTED GROWTH CONE MOTILITY

Establishing molecular mechanisms of axon guidance presents one of the greatest challenges in understanding the development of the nervous s ystem. There are many neurons, and each neuron by virtue of its locati on, biochemistry. and time of development, may generate a unique axon morphology in its response to environmental cues that may also change during development. The context dependence and combinatorial nature of these interactions make analysis of axon guidance particularly diffic ult. This article will focus on the neuronal growth cone as axon guida nce is controlled by interaction of the growth cone with its environme nt. I present here an overview of growth cone motility from the perspe ctive of cytoskeletal dynamics. I conclude with a discussion of our ap plication of regional laser inactivation of growth cone proteins to ad dress what proteins might be involved in locally modulating the cytosk eleton and how they affect growth cone motility.