Tomomi Shimogori
Speaker of Workshop 2
Will talk about: BTBD3 controls dendrite orientation toward active axons in mammalian neocortex
Tomomi Shimogori is the Team Leader of the lab for Molecular Mechanism of Thalamus Development at the RIKEN brain science institute near Tokyo, Japan. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, working for Dr Elizabeth Grove. She received a Ph.D. from the Chiba University, B.S. from Hoshi Collage of Pharmacy, Japan.
Experience-dependent structural changes in the developing brain are fundamental for proper neural circuit formation. Here, we show that during the development of the sensory cortex, dendritic field orientation is controlled by the BTB/POZ domain–containing 3 (BTBD3). In developing mouse somatosensory cortex, endogenous Btbd3 translocated to the cell nucleus in
response to neuronal activity and oriented primary dendrites toward active axons in the barrel hollow. Btbd3 also directed dendrites toward active axon terminals when ectopically expressed in mouse visual cortex or normally expressed in ferret visual cortex. BTBD3 regulation of dendrite orientation is conserved across species and cortical areas and shows how high-acuity sensory function may be achieved by the tuning of subcellular polarity to sources of high sensory activity.
